only 50% of ram showing up

hi, just curious if anyone else has had this issue as i seem to remember someone commenting on it but i could not find the old thread. just installed windows 7 64 bit and its only showing 8gb of ram, however i ordered 16gb of ram.. is this the dual channel thing playing jedi mind tricks on me or is there cause for concern.

 

The only thing that I'm aware of that would limit the amount of RAM your PC recognizes is the operating system. 32 bit systems can only recognize 2 ^ 32 bits of ram (right near 3gb) while a 64 bit system can recognize 2 ^ 64 which for right now is considered unlimited. So since you have Win 7 - you might have a RAM problem. I'd try reseating the memory.

 

just opened up the back of my notebook.
No ram in the rear .. only the 8gb of ram under the keyboard is there .. so annoyed that i've just waited 3 weeks for them to ship it , and they shipped it without the parts i requested so my options are pretty much Deal with the fact i got screwed over by gentech or send it back to them for a refund and take a hit on the shipping costs -.-

 

???? why can't u simply call them and have them pop the memory into an envelope and quick ship it to you?

 

to be honest if they offer to ship the RAM thats great , but im just imagining worst case scenario of them Insisting that the RAM was included. (it doesnt help my credibility that im currently living in thailand)

 

why? are people in Thailand not credible??

 

2^32 = 4GB

 

Yes but part of that is automatically held up by other parts of your system and is not accessible. You cannot utilize 4gb technically.

EDIT:

While I was just generalizing, yes you are closer to 4gb of usable memory than 3gb, but I don't go over 3gb myself as I hate waste, which is why I suggested that in parenthesis

 

Worst case probably won't happen. Just call them and mention they forgot to include the other 8GB. They'll probably send it off to you.

 

thanks for the advice , was worried i was getting screwed out of ram the eurocom way :S. but just got through to the guys over at gentech and they've said the ram should be on its way asap.

 

OP: Glad to hear it's all sorted out. Missing RAM is easy enough to add back in yourself, defective RAM is a bugger because you could potentially need to RMA the laptop. The former is much more painless

You're sort of right. Consumer versions of 32 bit Windows have addressable space up to 4GB of memory (rounding here to save space). Now, say you had a video card that used 1GB of memory for its processing. On top of that, let's say you didn't realize the limit and had a laptop with 6GB of RAM.

So you have 6GB to start, 4GB addressable, subtract 1GB for the video card = 3GB left as system memory.

Now, 64 bit can support up to 256TB of memory theoretically, but Windows 7 is artificially limited to 8, 16, or 192GB depending on the version. (If for nothing other than being a ludicrous amount of RAM in a consumer PC at the current time)

To throw a wrench in the whole thing, Windows Server variants (like 2003 Enterprise) in 32 bit can support 32GB with PAE.

Fun stuff

 

This is what I was getting at, without getting into detail