Intel 945 Chipset??

I was wondering if what was said in this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=278240&page=2
is true. Does the Intel 945 Chipset in my m9750 really limit me to using 3 GB of RAM??

Because I know that AW sells m9750s with 4 GB of RAM and I have never heard of a chipset limiting something like this...

So any help on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

 

It depends on what version. The GM chipset supports 4GB, but the PM version supports only 2GB. It was a design decision by intel, although manufacturers could limit the RAM supported in the BIOS (if they wanted a more mainstream vs. performance laptop).

 

Hm... well would you happen to know if AW uses one or the other? That would be helpful especially since I am not at home right now to look. XD Thanks.

 

If your using a 32-bit OS you can't use more then about 3.25 to 3.5GB anyway. Still it would be pretty weak if your chipset could not handle 4GB. I would think it would although the 945 is an older chipset.

 

I just found this at AW's site:
Intel 945PM + ICH7M-DH Chipset
Up to 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
2 dedicated SO-DIMM slots for Dual Channel DDR2 Memory

So I am maxed at 2 GB with the PM?? Are you sure?

 

I must have gotten them backwards. I can't quite remember which is which actually.

 

Haha... well I am thankful for that because I couldn't find anywhere else that said what it's max is and if I was maxed at 2 GB I was going to be quite sad. lol

 

I've got the M9750 with 4 Gigs installed and the system recognizes exactly 3Gigs of memory. I have a single 7950GTX and I'm pretty sure that if I had a second video card my system would indicate that I had 2.5 Gigs of memory due to there being 512 megs of memory installed on the video card. As cheap as the memory was I'm not too concerned and when I (if I) install a 64 bit OS I should be able to use the whole 4 Gigs.

Rob

------------------------------------------------------------------
M9750
2.0 core 2 duo
4 Gigs OCZ memory
7950 GTX
2 OCZ SSD's in Raid 0
XP Pro sp3

 

Hm... that's interesting. One thing of note though is that (I am pretty sure) the GPU isn't shared 512 MB of memory so you should be able to still access 3 GB of RAM...

 

That's correct. I can access 3 Gigs of ram.

Rob

Just found this,
"Due to an architectural decision made long ago, if you have 4GB of physical RAM installed, Windows is only able to report a portion of the physical 4GB of RAM (ranges from ~2.75GB to 3.5GB depending on the devices installed, motherboard's chipset & BIOS). This behavior is due to 'memory mapped IO reservations'. Those reservations overlay the physical address space and mask out those physical addresses so that they cannot be used for working memory. Significant chunks of address space below 4GB (the highest address accessible via 32-bit) get reserved for use by system hardware: BIOS – including ACPI and legacy video support; PCI bus including bridges etc. PCI Express support will reserve at least 256MB, up to 768MB depending on graphics card installed memory", explained Hilton Locke, Microsoft Software Test Engineer.

This explains my reduction to 3Gigs and the Mboard/chipset may also dictate my limits. The above was in reference to XP. Hilton Locke said the limitation does not apply to 64 bit operating systems so if you have a 64 bit system and it still doesn't recognize the full 4 Gig then it could be hardware issue.

Rob

 

There was a whole thread about this (search M9750 4GB of ram or something like that). Basically if you have 2 video cards, you will get around 2.5GB max and if you only have 1 video card you will get 3GB. The motherboard adds in the video ram to the total system ram and it can only use 3.5GB so if you have SLi there goes 1024MB already.

 

Hm... so chipsets nowadays all support 4 GB though right??

And do the newer chipsets still share with the GPU like the 945?

 

well i would suppose the newer versions of the 945 (as used in the m15x and m17x) support 4gb RAM, as proved by some 64bit users here. not sure what you mean with the second question, are you referring to x86 OS's not using all 4gb of RAM because of the GPU?

 

I meant to ask will newer chipsets still share memory from the GPU? Such that if you SLi you actually use less of your RAM?