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    Wheres My MEMORY, Dell Support MEM Question..?!?

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by gregv03, Sep 23, 2008.

  1. gregv03

    gregv03 Notebook Consultant

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    hi, received my inspiron 1420 ( already having issues and concerns) one of them, is, when i went into the dell support center, i clicked on the "about your system" section, and when i click on the Memory tab, it said that i had 3gb Total memory, but just 2.2gb of available memory. What does this mean? and where did the rest of my memory go?...
    i have a inspiron 1420, with 2.4ghz, 3gb ram, and nvidia8400...
     
  2. gothalo

    gothalo Notebook Consultant

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    Hm.. You have a dedicated card....Not sure..
     
  3. Lithus

    Lithus NBR Janitor

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    Given that your system was probably running at the time, 0.8 GB was probably being used.

    That or the Dell Gremlin stole your Megabytes.
     
  4. Greg

    Greg Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Yeah, I'm pretty sure a notebook has to use some memory when its running :).
     
  5. Bog

    Bog Losing it...

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    It may be Nvidia's TurboCache at work; dynamically allocated system RAM borrowed by the GPU when its dedicated memory runs out.
     
  6. mgh_a1

    mgh_a1 Notebook Evangelist

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    That's just the regular vista OS doing its job of using RAM. If it was not, you would be running so slowly you would be asking us why an expensive new computer sucks so much.
     
  7. gregv03

    gregv03 Notebook Consultant

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    yeah, so is this normal, i checked about 10 mins ago, and it said available memory was 2gb, now it says 2.1, is this ok? Also, i just got my inspiron and been using for a couple hours, and its kind of slow, and sluggish, and when i minimize screens its not smooth, at least not as smooth and fast as my sony vgn-cr notebook, but that one only had a 2.0 ghz processor and 3gb ram, with default intel graphics, how is it that this new Inspiron is gettin out performed by a laptop with less features and power??? anyone know how to fix this issue?
     
  8. gregv03

    gregv03 Notebook Consultant

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    ^^^ Anyone There? ^^^
     
  9. gothalo

    gothalo Notebook Consultant

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    8400gs with an Inspiron?? How?
     
  10. gregv03

    gregv03 Notebook Consultant

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    I choose it over the Intel graphics accelerator when customizing it on Dells website,...
     
  11. Ganesh Ranganathan

    Ganesh Ranganathan Notebook Consultant

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    I think you can get a dedicated card in the 1420. Its in the 1525, that no such option is available. Most probably because Dell wanted to push the more multimedia oriented Studio 15 into the market.
     
  12. mgh_a1

    mgh_a1 Notebook Evangelist

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    The 8400gs is soldered on the board however, it is not user changeable. So you are stuck with it. And given recent events it is probably defective too. So I would definitely stick with onboard, or get a studio, which uses an ATI card.