[ltp] The mystery of missing RAM

[Atul Chitnis]

On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:31:44 -0400
"David A. Desrosiers" <desrod@gnu-designs.com> wrote:

> Where is 1,063M or 1,053M of my new RAM going? I could certainly use
> it. 

If you are running a 32-bit OS, memory addresses grow from 0 upwards,
while memory for PCI grow from 4 GB downwards. This causes most of the
upper 1 GB to become unavailable to the OS. 

Running a 64-bit OS can solve this issue, as does running a PAE enabled
kernel, but that does not always work. The best you can expect in
that case is about 3.3GB, but much of this depends on the machine's
architecture, BIOS, the OS, etc.

Atul