Pandaman

Apologies if my forum search-fu is not strong.

I just put together my first PCI Express system a couple weeks ago, being relatively unfamiliar with the architectural changes in the hardware. The system I built has four gigs of RAM and I bought the ASUS Radeon 4870 Dark Knight card with a gig of RAM. I'm running 32-bit Vista, and yes, I know 32-bit Windows can't address more than four gigs of RAM, so it's not about that.

What's happening that I'm unable to understand is that all the programs that I run that tell me how much RAM my video card has tells me it's somewhere around 2.3 gigs of RAM. Further, Windows tells me that it can detect somewhere around 3.3 gigs of regular RAM, which is incredibly confusing to me. I am reminded that on AGP systems there is that "AGP Aperture Size" option in the BIOS. I never really understood what that did, but I knew that some programs would detect the RAM in your video card as a combination between what you actually had and what amount you had set in the BIOS for this option.

So anyway, I can't understand why Windows is detecting 3.3 gigs of normal RAM and then apparently 2.3 gigs of video RAM, which puts it way over the four gigs it's supposed to be able to see. Is there some funky PCI-Express equivalent to the AGP Aperture Size setting of yore? If so, can I change it to only use the RAM that's really there? And why does Windows see 3.3 gigs of system RAM? I thought that, at most, it would be able to see 3 gigs with a one gig card.

I ask all this because the games I'm playing all seem to be crashing a whole lot, and every other common cause I know of (bad drivers, overheating, not enough power, etc.) is not going on. It can't be the drivers since it's a fresh install of Vista and it's never had any but the current drivers on there, and I installed the OS by following the directions in Koroush Ghazi's excellent Tweakguides Tweaking Companion guide to the letter. I also know it's not heat because my card never gets above 53 degrees celsius under load, which is amazing to me as most sites list the temp getting above sixty for most cards in this line. And and it's not lack of power, because I have the Antec TruePower Quattro 850 watt, plus it's the stealth-upgraded model with 25 amps per rail instead of the standard 18.

If anyone can help me that'd be fantastic.

Judas

this is normal as depending on the available physical ram in your system, nearly half if not half will be "added" to the total, and made available for all programs to access.. this is why it shows up this way... just load up dxdiag and it'll clearly point out the available memory ...

using catalyst control center will tell you precisely how much onboard memory you have though.

However your crashing should have absalutely no relation to this occurance.

It would be adviseable to install 64bit vista however, and seeing as you already have 32bit cd key.... installing 64bit won't require you having to go out and buy another copy of windows.. just track down a 64bit version of your vista.....

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Pandaman

Hey, thanks for the response.

First thing, the Catalyst Control Center reports the exact same amount of RAM as DXDiag. The only place that I can find that shows the actual amount of installed RAM as 1.00 GB is the System Information application that comes with Windows.

As far as installing a 64-bit operating system, given that it doesn't support 16-bit applications and requires signed, up-to-date drivers of all hardware components, it's not really an option for me. I don't really mind losing the extra memory, I just don't want it to cause me any stability problems.

I did a bunch more googling and most have said what you said, being that Windows adds on extra RAM to use in case the card runs out. I really wish it wouldn't -- I got a card with a gig of RAM specifically so that Windows wouldn't have to worry about it. Also, on my last system, Windows did /not/ do that so I'm guessing it must be some funky thing having to do with the PCI-Express interface.

I'm also willing to accept that it's perhaps just that the games I'm playing are unstable to begin with. Things like Crysis Warhead, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Fallout 3 have all had sporadic stability issues, and all of which I can find page after page of issues from users about how unstable they are. Perhaps I just have bad taste in PC games right now. =P

Judas

Under the CCC hardware information tab it "should" state the actual size of the card....

sorry don't have the CCC in front of me right now...

The PCI-EX interface provides that fuctionality yes.... but you don't have to worry as even with 512mb cards, they usually are never ever fully utilized (yet)..... think of it like Swap file space, (only obviously much much faster)... that's just there IN CASE, never being used.

Your stability issues are abnormal i would have to say, this could be caused by any number of things, be it what was previously installed for a video card (which i doubt considering that you've basically stated this as being a new machine), insufficient power supply, heat related, Chipset drivers needing to be updated, BAD video card (it happens unfortunely)

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Pandaman

Yeah, I thought it would say the proper amount in CCC, but it doesn't for me. Oh well. And as far as utilizing it, the stuff I do uses tons of RAM. I don't just play games 'n stuff, so it's definitely worth it for me. I do have one other problem with this system, though.

There are many threads scattered about on various forums that talk about people having an issue where the systme refuses to display anything over DVI, but works fine with the DVI > VGA converter. I have this problem as well, and the way I'm working around it is to boot up my machine, tell it to hibernate, and then reboot off of that. When Windows resumes from hibernation, it doesn't poll the monitor for EDID information, apparently, so it's allowed to start. I'm 99% sure that that's what the problem is because a couple programs I have act crazy when I try to get them to tell me what my monitor's EDID says is its maximum resolution (which should be 1680x1050). I usually end up with a garbage number for the height, something like 1680x2318118180818. The CCC reports that it thinks my highest resolution is 1920x1080 so I'm guessing that it's trying to send that signal to my monitor when it first boots into Windows, or something like that.

Checking around tells me that it has to do with an incompatibility with the card and certain monitors, or even possibly that my monitor's EDID information is scrambled. I'm hesitant to think that that's the case, though, as it ran with my last system (running an HD 3850) just fine over DVI. I kinda don't think these two things are related, but I guess they might be.

Judas

alot of monitors i've recently seen for whatever reason have inaccurate EDID information that it being read.... it's hard to say about that... but no doubt it's not exactly great.. and doesn't make sense.

Currently i'm having a problem with my samsung 52" where the EDID information on it states 75hz support AT 1920x1080 and reguardless of what i do.. win7 insist on booting up and using that as the resolution of choice. which presents a problem of simply having no display at all.

As for clarification.. in the ATI CCC

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Pandaman

I appreciate the image, but really, mine says the bigger number.

Judas

hyper memory would denote some kind of hybrid crossfire or onboard graphics or something strange.

It should not be showing up like that i think.

Considering that i've got 5 vista machines with different graphics adapters that all show the correct size as well as memory type as GDDR3 or 4 or 5 (or other types pertaining to thier generation.)

indeed something looks very odd.

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Pandaman

Well, I do have a motherboard that supports Hybrid CrossfireX mode with its onboard Radeon HD 3300, but the manual says that it only works with the HD 2400 Pro/XT, HD 3450 or HD 3470 of which mine is not one of. In any case, I've completely disabled the onboard graphics stuff in the BIOS. Perhaps there's still some lingering BIOS option not under the "Integrated Graphics" section that I need to disable or something. I've looked it over a few times and none of the options that I understand seem to be what I'm looking for.

Judas

you could send for support from asus to see if they have any suggestion... maybe there is a motherboard jumper that could help out....

not completely sure as i simply haven't had the problem and i'm not sure where to go after that aside from checking and seeing if a bios update is available...

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Pandaman

There is indeed a BIOS update available, so I guess I could give that a shot. FYI, what I'm seeing in other places is that people seem to think that having this "shared" memory is normal with PCI Express, but maybe they're all using onboard (or budget) video cards. In any case, I'm submitting a support ticket to see if they can help me out with it, and I'm double-checking my BIOS settings to see if there's anything in there that I might have missed.

kn00tcn

crossfire is off in CCC? (if it even exists?)

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Pandaman

Crossfire is currently not an option for me, but things like GPU-Z and such that check for such options say that it's off.