NP9262 and 8GB Ram Fully Available?

I am about to purchase a NP9262 and have a few questions concerning specifications listed on the Sager website, but not on other websites like xoticpc and powernotebooks. Sager's specifications for the NP9262 memory say that due to chipset limitations only 6.8GB out of installed 8GB of memory will be available. I don't understand this? Is this correct?

Since the Intel Core2 Duo/Quad cpu's support 64bit memory addresses (supports exabytes of ram), the motherboard accepts 8 GB ram, vista64 also supports 64bit memory addresses, and the Intel P965 chipset supports 8GB of ram and has 36bit host bus addressing (supports up to 64GB ram) then why would Sager say that the NP9262 won't recognize and use the full installed 8GB of ram?

Is it because the BIOS does not support 64bit memory addressing or doesn't have a software/hardware memory hole enabled?

I'm very interested to hear from NP9262 owners and notebook reseller rep's. This particular feature of using all 8GB of installed ram is actually pretty important to me in the future when 8GB of sodimm ram makes sense monetarily. Thanks in advance!

 

just like anything having to with this memory or space... we seem to never get to use all available space or memory.
for example:
320 gig hard drive= 298 true gigs of space
4 gigs of ram = 3.0 or 3.2 or 3.5 gigs of ram
8 gigs of ram = 6.8 or so gigs of ram

i would love to have this answer as well, but it must have something to do with internal workings of each perspective component and his motherboard.

i don't even think desktop units can use all available memory. and servers are up to 64 gb's but can not address the full 64 gb's

 

Donald (powernotebooks) and Justin (XoticPC) will tell you the same thing as I remember having discussions on this forum about this! The D901C chassis runs on a 965 chipset and as such only has a maximum adrdessable memory of 8GB. This means you will be limited to a maximum of 6.8GB of available RAM. It doesn't have anything to do with the OS etc, the 8GB max addressable is just a "feature" of the 965 chipset.

johnksss - HDDs show different sizes after formating etc purely because of the way HDD manufacturers market their products. Extreme simplification - because 1GB is actually 1024MB and not 1000MB, when your computer gets it's hands on your new HDD it seems to loose space.

 

You are correct in your explaination of hard drive availability but not about the ram. Ram size of 3gb = 3 gb IF your bios and motherboard chipset support memory hole remapping.

techfiles.de/dmelanchthon/files/memory_hole.pdf

For example, I currently run an AMD 4400+ 64bit processor with an MSI motherboard and chipset (supporting 4GB ram) and xp_64...enabling the hardware memory hole in the bios gives me full access to the full 4GB memory installed and remaps peripheral overhead above 32bit 4GB memory addressing. Otherwise, without the hardware memory hold enabled my system only sees around 3.45 GB ram due to overhead from my 256mb graphics card, the 256 mb agp aperture, and other peripherals. So you see, is is possible to use full 4GB memory since I am doing that now on my desktop.

Just not sure if the NP9262 BIOS supports the memory hold or 36bit+ memory addressing.

 

good answer neil.
still don't know why they don't call it a 300 gb drive though and keep everything in form.

how about can we see a picture of you using about 3.4 gigs of ram.... if you don't mind...

edit: not sure about this, but isn't amd better at addressing the memory issue than intel?

 

I didn't say that, the original question was about 8GB RAM in the D901C and I answered that The point is that once you get up to 8GB you hit the maximum addressable space of the 965 chipset.

 

I attached a jpg of my current setup I mentioned. It has a nforce4 ultra chipset that supports up to 4GB of ram. The screenshots of the bios and windows x64 system show that with memory hole remapping disabled windows doesn't see full the 4 GB. However, with memory hole remapping enabled the bios and windows sees and utilizes the full 4GB. (Even though the chipset supports a max 4GB)

 

what i meant was something more along the lines of this....

 

is that what you wanted to see johnksss?

 

yes, now fill it up... easiest way would be to open about 50 internet explorer windows, but if that is xp. you may need to open more.

 

@dvfedele is right IMO.

Laptops usually have the memory remapping option either hidden or unavailable in the BIOS, since enabling it in some cases causes instability, i.e. video drivers crashing, BSODs, system hangups etc etc.

So, most laptops have it disabled (default behaviour).
But, those which have it enabled can recognize and address the whole max memory installed.
E.g. The M1530 can address the whole 8GB (965 chipset), because most probably it has the memory remapping option enabled in the BIOS. Pre-A11 BIOS releases caused problems with 8GB and allowed max 6GB addressable. But with the A11 revision for the M1530, the full 8GB is addressable, irrespective of the H/W configuration.



So, saying that "You always get less resources than the stated max limit" is incorrect.

As for the HDD thing, for computers: 1kb=1024bytes; But for HDD manufacturers: 1kb=1000bytes (which is stated in the HDD datasheets)
Have a look at orev's guide to clear up the HDD space thing.

 

im with you both on being addressable, but can you use it.
in the example i put forth..i used the max of this system under vista 32 bit.

in your example...can you go ahead and fill it up as well. meaning using 98 to 100 percent of the memory available. then take a picture.

 

here you go johnksss. I turned off the paging file so we're dealing with physical ram only. Was only able to cache 3.75GB before xp64 got mad and starting spitting out virtual memory errors because I disabled the paging file.

edit: but actually the task manager shows commit around 3.85GB (3933392K)

 

Of course you can use it. That's because it is addressed.

The only case where you won't be able to use it, is when the GPU is feeding on memory from the RAM. Probably say 1GB system memory from the RAM for the GPU - that memory will be visible to windows, but windows will not use it, and keep 1GB for the GPU, and the rest 7GB for itself.

Thats not my screenshot. Its from someone's M1530. You can request someone in this thread to run a Blend Test in Orthos, so that the memory is fully utilized. (I don't know how much max memory utilization is caused by Orthos in Windows)

@dvfedele has the full 4GB addressed in the above screenie. But it is pretty much impossible to go over 90-95% memory utilization in windows.

 

yes. i dont use a pagefile with 4 gigs of ram.

so it's 3.75 and it maxes out which sounds about right, since it goes with what msdn was talking about.

no it's not. up above are two test. both at 100 percent memory usuage.

also, you can do a scan at as high as the ram will let you before it errors out. in my case 2400dpi errors out. i would need to test further to find the exact number probably about 1800 or so....

 

whats the point in that much memory??????

 

photo shop
adobe products
auto cad
recording studio software
and high end graphics software not mentioned
servers & work stations

 

****, never hit that much usage. Nor do I plan to,however I did hit 333 tabs in Opera, and I had to reduce the DPI a lot to fit all the tabs in the screen

You`d be surprised just how many programs require memory, especially in college application, architecture, design, photography etc.

 

Ok so obviously the NP9262 won't support use of the full 8GB ram in windows 64 b/c the chipset only supports 8GB. If you want to use full ram, the only way to do so without memory mapped I/O eating away resources is to have your chipset support more memory than is installed, have 64 bit os and cpu, and have bios enable mapping of memory I/O above 4gb.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946003/
"Physical memory addresses that are mapped to these I/O regions cannot be used to address physical system memory. These addresses also cannot be used to prevent the operating system from using some physical memory that would ordinarily be accessed between the 3GB physical address and the 4GB upper physical address limit. The size of these I/O regions varies from system to system because they determine the type and configuration of the system’s peripherals."

 

I work in visual effects for film and you'd be surprised...we run some quad core and eight core linux workstations with 16GB- 32GB of memory for fluid simulations and rendering...and some of those fluid sims still take 12 hours for about 100 frames of animation.

 

me either.

just showing that it won't use the full memory stated either. even if you do all that other stuff. 4gigs=3.75 and 8 gigs =6.8 gigs. i read somewhere why it does that, but to lazy to go find it again...

 

Ok FINALLY figured it all out...I spoke to the lead engineer at Sager and powernotebooks was kind enough to put in 8GB in an NP9262 to test this for me. The NP9262 does in fact recognize all 8GB of ram (the P965 chipset does support up to 8GB of ram).

Sager's quote of the only "6.8GB ram being recognized due to chipset limitations" is inaccurate. Only 6.8GB of ram is recognized by your OS ONLY if you use vista with SP1. With that being said, linux distros supporting 64bit memory addressing will support then entire 8GB because the BIOS recognizes it all. It has yet to be determined which windows OS's will see all 8GB ram.

I am ordering up my NP9262 from powernotebooks and will let you guys know once I get it up and running.

 

ummmm. are you sure you asked them the right question?
because using the full 8 gb of ram would mean you would need about 9 gb's of actual ram to use 8gb's. each gig of ram has a section of it allocated to other things to make up the 1 gb of ram (video cards/i-o operations/saved memory locations for what ever reasons)

 

Yes I am positive...they installed 8GB of ram into the NP9262 and the bios recognizes all 8GB.

Here is where I think the confusion lies..When windows sets aside memory addresses for memory its not actually using ram for the video card/pci io...all it is doing is reserving memory addresses so that the cpu has a way to use the video card memory and keep track of it internally for data i/o.

For example, the problem with 32 bit systems is that the hardware can only accomodate 4 GB of memory addresses. So yes, if you install 4GB ram and have a 512MB video card then you lose 512mb of addressable ram. This 512mb that you don't have any more isn't actually being used...rather, the memory addresses that would have been used for the 512mb of ram are now being used to reference the 512mb of video ram.

Apparently Vista 64 with sp1 has a limit of only being able to address a max of 6.8GB (go microsoft). This is the problem that Sager is commenting on when discussing max usable ram.

However, most linux distros can accomodate all ram installed due to the way it handles memory mapped i/o. I'm at working sitting on an HP workstation with quad core xeon and 16GB of fully usable ram under red hat. No ram hit for my videocard/pci i/o. When I get my NP9262 I will try versions of windows and see if I can indeed get it to recognize and utilize all 8GB ram. I'm not super concerned with this because I will be operating mostly within linux, but its still an interesting thing to discover.

So, with the NP9262, it has a P965 chipset that has 36 bit memory addressing capabilities...so it can keep track of 64GB worth of memory addresses and the core2 duo/quad has around 40bit memory adrdresses to keep track of 1TB of memory addresses.

Even thought yes, you used the max ram of 8GB for this system, the cpu, memory bus, and 64bit OS can keep track of memory addresses that greatly exceeds 8GB. So the memory addresses needed for your video card/pci io will be able to be mapped without taking away your ram because your system is capable of addressing vast amount of memory (again, depending on your windows version..not sure about vista but server versions of windows can see and use all your ram)

 

Read the Intel datasheet on the P965 chipset; you'll find that not all of the memory holes are remapped. Consequently, neither you, linux, nor any WinOS will see 8,589,934,592 bytes of useable physical RAM.

 

? Could you point out where you see that? I've read through the P965 specs and they have systems in place to reclaim memory lost through memory mapped i/o but they never mention that.

 

dvfedele, I'm also getting a 8GB Sager 9262 in a few weeks to run a CentOS 5.2 (x86-64) or Fedora 10 (x86-64) build. Looking forward to all that awesome memory.

 

Awesome...I'm getting the same config as you (minus the 2nd hdd)
(FYI...its cheaper to get the standard memory and pay $299 on newegg for the upgrade to 8gb ddr2 667)

 

I've just powered on my Shuttle SX38P2 Pro that has a Xeon 3370 and 8GB of memory. Under CentOS 5.2 (x86-64) I'm able to have 8177736K of memory. I expect to have about the same in the Sager 9262.

Thanks for the NewEgg tip about the memory, unfortunately NewEgg doesn't ship to my country :-(

 

well as long as you run a program like this one


and you run it to it's full potential. and it shows 8.0gb used and not 6.8 or 7.0 or 7.2 or 7.6 but in fact...8.0.

now if it does that...then congratulations, but if it doesn't... i wouldn't bother looking further for an answer because you will have it.

 

Based on this Intel datasheet, under Sec. 3.1, beginning on page 52, several legacy sections that are mapped into low memory have statements to the effect that disabled memory is not remapped. Also, the TSEG memory segment, in Sec. 3.2.2.

Also, accessibility of the remapped memory depends on whether or not the software making the memory call submits memory addresses coded in 32-bit format or 36-bit format - only 36-bit format will be able to access the really high end of remapped memory.

 

Okay, I just received my Sager 9262.

And the first CD-ROM I booted on this brand new system is the memtest+ 2.10 tool.
I'm very impressed by the speed of the main Memory.

L1 Cache : 32K 39806 MB/s
L2 Cache : 6144K 18472 MB/s
L3 Cache : none
Memory : 8190M 3632 MB/s

In comparison my D900K is running at 1440 MB/s for it's main memory.

 

what does it look like under windows?

edit: in your case...open about 100 internet explorer windows while running task manager and we shall finally get to the bottom of whether all the memory is used or not..

 

And here is a screenshot of the Sager 9262 top processes and the status of the memory (using the Fedora 10 (x86-64) Live CD)
I am able to see the whole 8196MB.

 

do you see where it says 6901256 used. that should say something like 8196000 or something like that to be fully used.

 

Nope thats incorrect. If you look at it again...
8196116 total - 1294860 used = 6901256 available/free
all 8 GB being used

 

hey, your right abut that being free memory, but your wrong about it being used. the argument was "used" memory not how much the system sees

 

Well then I'm sorry to say that your argument is pointless. This system booted into any 64bit os will never show 8GB as free/usable memory...its impossible. You're always going to have some ram used as the overhead for the os footprint/open programs.

The basis of this thread was to debunk the np9262 "limitation" of memory mapped i/o and peripherals not being able to use physical memory installed because of addressing limitations. We've answered the question in the case of the np9262...the bios/chipset can address/recognize the full 8GB of ram. Therefore you have the full 8GB of ram when starting to work with a proper 64 bit os, prior to os and program footprint of course.

 

no need to get hostile.
your question was answered on the second post. "no" you can not use all 8 gigs of ram. same with 4 gigs of ram. "see" and "use" are not the same.

 

Great to know that it’s proven to be a non-hardware limit!

It would be interesting if you try the Vista64 now that you have an 8GB machine

 

I'm planning to install Windows Server 2008 (x86-64) on the NP9262 tonight. I will give you my results then.

 

when you do... can you just open as many IE windows as the system will let you and see if your resource meter shows 8.0 or the imfamous 6.8 or so used memory...

thanks allot!

 

opening IE windows will not utilize that much memory.... even with flash content on them.

I only know people working with high-resolution textures and pictures (like 20 megapixels) would tap more than 6GB of memory (either page, physical, or combination of both).

for typical usage and gaming, you wont even utilize 4GB.

 

you need to seriously page some memory to a secondary or third harddrive (any other than C).

you do not seem to by taking advantage of the fact that having separate physical HDDs is useful for improved performance by setting pagefiles to be on any of the other physical drives... other than the C drive

... this is, of course, only if you are not doing RAID-0,1,5 with all drives.

 

running raid zero
this example was just to show max user memory
i usually dont run a page file, but if i dont run one here doing this max out test stuff it will crash.
i did this test under 64 bit as well.
3.21 max under 32 bit and 3.75 max under 64 bit. if i had 8 gigs i would find out for certain as to how much in that scenario.

 

check this out.

I am actually testing memory on my notebook, so I only have one stick of 1GB DDR400 in there with pagefile set to 2048MB on my second HDD (disabled pagefile on my primary drive).

45 Firefox windows open simultaneously on MSN.com

(look at attachment)

does not even break a sweat... even with 1GB of physical memory.

I do not use IE... thats a resource hog for sure.... and I think its got a horrible UI.

Gotta love FF3's well coded programming.... and the amazing extensions that help prevent useless scripts and ads.

As for OS, I still like XP more since I have tweaked it very well for overall performance and stability.... although I do have a partition for Vista Ultimate when I need to do tests.

 

ummm, yes...i know. kind of why i used IE...*LOL* i had 150 FF windows open and i was still well under 2 gigs.

but this was just something to use up the memory is all. you can do an encoding or a picture resize or render a avi/mpeg/jpeg file. any number of things to max the memory out. for me. IE is just easier to open and close the group in one click.

 

most people wont use up that much memory... come on, who goes on MSN that much... LOL.... especially stupidly using IE.

but typically, 4GB is quite good and has extra headroom for any typical user or gamer.

that said, I wish my notebook had DDR2 support... since I can only max out at 2GB of DDR1/400 (2x1GB)....

But its been working fine for me now for over 2.5 years... cant complain.

thats all, i'm just posting cuz i'm bored.

 

Okay, here is the follow-up of my previous Fedora 10 (x86-64) test of a Sager 9262 with 8GB. This time I installed Windows Server 2008 with SP2 Beta (x64) on the Sager 9262. I then proceded to install the Hyper-V Role and create a few Virtual Machines.

The screenshot shows a Sager 9262 running

• 1x VM with 512MB (Root CA)
• 5x VM with 1024MB (AD, SQL, SCVMM, SCCM, SCOM)
• 1x VM with 2048MB (ILM2 Beta Release Candidate)

Which is about 7680 MB worth of Virtual Machine memory. Add to this the basic overhead of the Windows Server 2008 and you have a pretty crowded system. The system is also configured with a 8192MB swap file, and as you see in the PageFile value, it starts to be used.

As for people saying that Windows Server 2008 is not a Laptop oriented operating system, I highly recommend that you google the term Windows Workstation 2008. It is worth studying it's potential.

Regards,
Erik