Amt of RAM

I have 8 Gb of RAM. (Does that mean 8 x 1024 = 8,192,000,000 bits)

free -h shows I have 6.8 G of RAM.

System info shows I have 7086492 kb

free -m shows

total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 6920

They all can not be right. ??

Why the discrepancy ?

Looks like you have 7GB RAM and the discrepancies are due to rounding

They must round down because I do have 8 Gb of RAM.

Run memtest maybe to be sure. Video may be taking some.

I have a dedicated video card.

BIOS shows 8192 Mb.

My experience is that the BIOS may show a larger amount of memory than what is actually available to the OS. It will show the physical amount, not accounting for reserved address ranges.

For example, I have a couple Motion Computing LE1700s and a Lenovo G555 which will physically accept 2x2GB RAM sticks, reporting 4GB RAM installed in the BIOS. But the OS will only be able to utilize just barely over 3GB of it due to reserved address spaces. Seems stupid, but there's just no way around it. Both of those models practically max out at 3GB. It sounds like your issue is similar.

There's also the possibility of a memory overlay between the video card RAM and the system RAM, but typically such an overlay would be significantly smaller than 1GB.

My system never uses even close to the amount of RAM I have, so no big deal.

Actually, you have 8 GiB of RAM. (B = byte, b = bit). Gi = 2^(3*10) = 1073741824. The prefix "G" may be binary or decimal depending on the program that reports it. Unfortunately, there is nothing on this matter in the man page of "free".

If your motherboard includes a videocard, the videocard uses RAM even if you don't use the videocard.

You can use "free -b" to get an actual byte count. The "Total" reported by free is the memory that is available after the kernel has been loaded and initialized.

Originally Posted by beroal Actually, you have 8 GiB of RAM. (B = byte, b = bit). Gi = 2^(3*10) = 1073741824. The prefix "G" may be binary or decimal depending on the program that reports it. Unfortunately, there is nothing on this matter in the man page of "free". If your motherboard includes a videocard, the videocard uses RAM even if you don't use the videocard.

Interesting.

How can I check if my mobo has a videocard ?

Originally Posted by Fixit7 How can I check if my mobo has a videocard ?

Look into its specification. Or post its model name here.

Only if you have lshw installed

harry@biker1:~$ sudo -i
[sudo] password for harry: 
root@biker1:~# lshw -short | grep -i --color display
/0/100/2                   display     Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
/0/100/2.1                 display     Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
root@biker1:~#  lshw -class display
  *-display:0             
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 07
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: irq:27 memory:f6c00000-f6ffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:efe8(size=8)
  *-display:1 UNCLAIMED
       description: Display controller
       product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2.1
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.1
       version: 07
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
       configuration: latency=0
       resources: memory:f6b00000-f6bfffff

if inxi is installed

harry@biker1:~$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Card: Intel Mobile 4 Series Integrated Graphics Controller
           Display Server: X.Org 1.15.1 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1280x800@60.0hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel GM45 Express x86/MMX/SSE2
           GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 10.1.3

Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Kaveri [Radeon R7 Graphics] Display Server: X.Org 1.18.3 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD KAVERI (DRM 2.43.0, LLVM 3.8.0) GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 11.2.0

Thought I had a dedicated graphics card.

Apparently not as I saw that my video cable connected to the motherboard.

Looks like about 800 Mb of my RAM is being used by my monitor.

Which explains my RAM figures.

Since inxi is installed.

inxi -F

Will show true ram specs at the bottom of the terminal readout under

Info:      Processes: 189 Uptime: 1:07 Memory: 553.9/1971.2MB
           Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.32

Info: Processes: 210 Uptime: 5:04 Memory: 852.3/6920.4MB