This build has been nothing short of problematical with a box arriving damaged, other parts being defective, and another box arriving damaged. Things were looking pretty good today with the final shipment of replacement parts arriving...until now. I am supposed to have a single, 512 MiB, DDR2-800 stick in the computer. According to the task manager and system properties, it is only registering as 384 MiB. How is that possible?

I must mention this Kingston stick is quite unique. It is singled sided memory and all the chips are only half the physical size of the typical memory chip. Is this because of incompatibility with the motherboard or is it because some of those memory chips are defective? Basically, I'm asking if I should refund or replace. XD


Edit: The owner of this computer has been waiting for three weeks because of all the mess. If I need to replace it, I will demand Newegg send me the replacement stick and I will send the defective stick when the new stick arrives. The computer is workable now and I don't want to keep it from the owner any longer than I have to.

What does a program like CPUz report (both the "Memory" and the "SPD" (per slot) tabs)?

CPU-Z says 512 under Memory and 512 under SPD -> Slot #2.

Full report is here:
http://fordgt90concept.homeip.net/cpuz.htm

Well, that suggests to me that it's not a BIOS or mobo compatibility issue. AT this point, the only thing I can think of would be some sort of 128mb assignment to another resource...like a video buffer, RAM shadowing, or something like that getting assigned before total RAM is reported to Windows.

You didn't say if you'd tried any other brand memory stick.

I think you hit the nail on the head. It does have integrated graphics (VIA Chrome 9) and it is the only display adapter available at this time so I am using it. It could very well be using 128 MiB system RAM for itself.


Edit: I haven't tried any other types of RAM because I don't have any other DDR2 sticks available to me.

Yep, that seems like the most likely cause.

Is there a setting in the BIOS to allocate how much ram you want to the video adapter?

If its a very basic workstation (internet etc) that could easily be lowered to 64MiB, or even 32

Yup, yup. That's on board video share memory to you. You should be able to dial it down in the BIOS, with a bit sacrifice to video performance. Once you have the vid card in, you should have that 128MB back.

The owner uses it for pretty much strictly Internet access. 384 MiB should be enough to keep AVG, Windows, and Internet Explorer happy so I think I'll leave it.

Yeah sure, it'd be well enough if thats all its used for.

I used to run XP on an Athlon 750 with 256MiB ram

You know, I'm genuinely surprise that this confused you

I don't deal with on-board very often and this is the first time I've ever used a VIA IGP. The thought never crossed my mind. XD

Guess I've just spent too much time dealing with cr@ppier kit than you! Three years working at a site that ONLY bought Elonex (until they went bust!) (which didn't surprise us!).

Hehe, yeah. All my previous budget builds were with an NVIDIA nForce chip which doesn't mess with amount of memory reaching Windows (if it does, I missed it). I went with a VIA chip because the owner has 3 PATA devices so I needed 2 x ATA100/133. Only VIA had that at a good price point. The VIA board is pretty good but VIA needs to better arrange their drivers for download and give the downloads more descriptive names.

I simply adore how simple the NVIDIA driver process is for entire NVIDA builds.