Clarification on physical memory

Hi,

I'm an owner of a sxps 1340 and have the following problem. My system freezes after 5 minutes of operating. It does that 3 out of the 4 times if I reboot. I think this appeared after I installed the videocard update when I received the Dell "Alert".

After corresponding with Dell they advised me to do a system restore, which didn't help. So now I did a factory image restore to bring everything back as initially.

My system has 4GB of internal memory, but if I start task manager I only see 2301MB of physical memory. And my system is using 51% of the total physical memory. This without having installed any programs except the one that came with the factory image.

My question is: Could this be a memory hardware failure?

I've attached a printscreen of my task manager.

Thanks for your help!!

 

Are you using the 32-bit version of Windows Vista? If that's the case, then it would explain some of your missing RAM.

 

I am indeed using the 32bit version, however I don't think this is the only cause for missing 1700mb.

 

If one of your memory sticks was faulty, your laptop wouldn't even be able to boot, so I think it's safe to rule that out.

 

I have a 1340 running 32 bit Vista Home Premium.

I also was concerned about the apparently missing memory and wanted to compare to a 64 bit system so I installed Windows 7 64 bit as a second operating system.

I have attached screen shots of Task manager for each operating system. They are both running the same software - Windows Explorer and Photoshop Elements 7.

You will see that there is a large difference in 'Total Physical Memory'.

I understand that it is to do with the fact that a 32 bit operating system can only address 4 GBytes whereas the 64 bit system can address vastly more.

Geoff

 

This is what 4Gb of memory should look like on a 32-bit system

This is my M1530 on Windows 7 32-bit

 

My memory sitution in Vista 32-bit looks exactly the same as that screenshot. Apart from the mystery of the missing ram, there appears to be nothing wrong with my system at all. I think that rules out any hardware failure in your case.

I suspect the missing ram might have something to do with the shared video memory used by the integrated GPU on the 9500m. When I switch to discrete gfx the memory situation doesn't change. This is a bit annoying. Surely memory should be freed up if the card has dedicated memory to use?

I'll try 64 bit Windows 7 and see what happens then. I don't have an answer but I think it's safe to say there is nothing physically wrong with your system anyway

 

That's what I was expecting from my system, even on a 32-bits OS. My desktop PC with 4GB also runs 32bit vista but has 3326MB of total physical memory displayed. I'll see what the Dell technicians have to say.

Too bad I have to wait untill my warranty is transfered from the UK to France in order for me to get support. Guess it would be too good if the international warranty was really international.

Thank you all for the screenshots!! I'll keep you updated on the results.

 

You could be onto something there. Although I'm not too versed in the way of these hybrid graphics card systems, I'm almost certain the system will 'reserve' memory for the shared memory graphics card. You could try disabling or completely uninstalling the shared memory graphics card to see if that is indeed the issue. I'm fairly certain simply disabling it will give you back the reserved memory, although to be 100% sure an uninstall would be required if the disabling doesn't work.

Hope you get it sorted!

 

Further investigation confirms that it's the video ram. Have a look at the screenshot I just took. There is nothing wrong with your system.

Why this memory can't be freed when the discrete GPU is active is another question.

 

Maybe time for Dell to create a more efficient driver/update

 

So is one of those screenshots from Windows 7 64-bit? Did you install a gfx driver for it? I am wondering if Hybrid SLI isn't supported and whether the system is just using the discrete chip there.

 

Hm...I'm wondering is this a limitation of drivers of windows itself. It might be worth someone giving Dell a call to find out. However if your not using the integrated card - why not disable it? I'm sure it's possible, and should *hopefully* free up that memory. Then when you want to use it, just reenable it?

 

The problem is that Windows sees them as one device so you can't just pick one out and disable it. The nvidia driver handles all the fancy switching as far as I can tell.

 

When the discrete GPU (9200GS) is active, it works with the integrated GPU (9400M) in Hybrid-SLI, which is why you can't just disable the integrated.

If I had to make a wild guess, I don't think the 9200GS alone would be much faster than the integrated 9400M anyway. You might want to upgrade to Vista x64 which might give you back some of your memory - although the integrated 9400M is only supposed to use up 256MB of system RAM.

Another thing to try would be to completely uninstall the video drivers and reinstall them. I had some funky behaviour with my 1340 as well after installing drivers on top of one another - I fixed them by uninstalling the video drivers completely (via. add/remove programs), running DriverCleaner (or an equivalent), and reinstalling the lastest Dell drivers.

 

Even on discrete cards this occurs for some. E.g. my Dell Dimension 9100 with an Nvidia 6800 w/ 256MB onboard memory dedicates an additional ~700MB of RAM to the GPU and I've been too lazy to remove it (nor have I had the need to XD).

Either way, a lack of 1.3 GB is rather high. You could try force-enabling PAE.
http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=989

 

Good to see that this thread is developing into something good and useful. I was considering changing OS from 32bit to 64 and found the following:

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19276918.aspx

So if you have vista 32bit and want 64bit from dell follow the instructions on this link. I'm going to try it too, good luck!!

 

Yes, sorry if it wasn't clear.

The left hand shot is Windows 7 64 bit.
The right hand shot is Vista Home Premium 32 bit.

In my very limited understanding of how the operating systems work:

The 4 GByte address limitation of a 32 bit operating system, coupled with Vista's ability to only address 3 Gbyte (think that's correct - it's been discussed in many places), means that the graphics card has to be mapped somewhere in this memory. It appears the 9500m hybrid SLI needs a lot of address space so that there is very little 'free' memory space even without programs running.

On the other hand, a 64 bit operating can address Terrabytes of memory space, and it appears that Windows 64 bit systems can map the graphics memory more efficiently, thus leaving more physical memory available. If someone has a more technical explanation for this, then I would appreciate it if it can be posted.

I happen to be using Windows 7 for my 64 bit system, but I would expect the same results with Vista 64 bit.

This address availability of 32 vs 64 bit systems has been discussed in 'The Official Studio XPS 1340 Owners Thread' but without the Search facility in the forum, I can't find it.

My system was provided with Vista 32 bit. When I called Dell, they would not provide Vista 64 bit as it wasn't part of the original order. I emailed support and they provided Vista 64 bit with no problem. I was going to install Vista 64 bit, then Windows 7 RC1 64 bit became available .....

Yes, both Vista and Windows 7 are running Hybrid SLI fine on my laptop.

Hope this helps,

Geoff