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Old 07-12-2014, 09:24 AM   #1
cwizardone
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Slackware64 Only See 3.25 out of 4 Gigs of RAM.


A neighbor (and Slackware convert ) is running a "old" Dell Dimension 9100 with an Intel P4, 64-bit processor with Hyperthreading, EM64T, etc. I'm always amazed how well it runs just about everything he has thrown at it.
The maximum amount of RAM for the motherboard is 4 Gigs, which he just installed yesterday.
He asked me to take a look as Slackware64 is only showing 3.25 Gigs of RAM.
The BIOS shows the entire 4 Gigs and reports all of it is available to the operating system.
However, GKrellm and other various utilities show only 3.25 Gigs
and the system surely isn't using the other 3/4 of a Gig.
Any ideas as to why the RAM isn't being properly used?
Thanks!

Last edited by cwizardone; 07-12-2014 at 09:59 AM.
 
Old 07-12-2014, 11:33 AM   #2
onebuck
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Hi,

Specs for 'Dell Dimension 9100' show 4GB is max memory. Make sure the BIOS is up to date on the machine.
 
Old 07-12-2014, 11:58 AM   #3
compassnet
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I have 16GB RAM installed here on my Slackware64 14.10 box, and this:

$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 15398 11147 4250 0 298 8687
-/+ buffers/cache: 2162 13236
Swap: 0 0 0

and

$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 15768376 kB
MemFree: 4388928 kB
Buffers: 305628 kB
Cached: 8896740 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 6874116 kB
Inactive: 4055560 kB
Active(anon): 1727168 kB
Inactive(anon): 23780 kB
Active(file): 5146948 kB
Inactive(file): 4031780 kB
Unevictable: 0 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Dirty: 88 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 1727372 kB
Mapped: 98812 kB
Shmem: 23640 kB
Slab: 366004 kB
SReclaimable: 339192 kB
SUnreclaim: 26812 kB
KernelStack: 3408 kB
PageTables: 11448 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 7884188 kB
Committed_AS: 2785696 kB
VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed: 315640 kB
VmallocChunk: 34359373616 kB
AnonHugePages: 825344 kB
DirectMap4k: 17740 kB
DirectMap2M: 4644864 kB
DirectMap1G: 11534336 kB

Since I have a AMD APU (CPU + GPU in the same chip), if I'm not mistaken some of the RAM is reserved for video.

Perhaps you have a onboard video card that is using RAM Memory for video too? That would be why the BIOS reports 4GB and Linux less.

Compass.
 
Old 07-12-2014, 05:00 PM   #4
ReaperX7
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By any chance do you use an onboard video chipset?

If you have one, it uses Shared RAM for the framebuffer and your system allocates so much system RAM for the VRAM.
 
Old 07-12-2014, 05:29 PM   #5
BobKay
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For reference, my 32-bit P4 system with 4GB installed has this according to /proc/meminfo:
MemTotal: 3100784 kB
which is a bit less than your 3.25GB.

I suspect ReaperX7 is on the right track, but 750MB sounds like a bit much for video RAM on an oldish system.
 
Old 07-12-2014, 06:28 PM   #6
TobiSGD
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To be able to use the whole 4GB of RAM the motherboard/BIOS has to support memory remapping, so that it can blend the RAM that is in the PCI memory range to addresses above the 4GB range to make it accessible to the OS.
Look in the BIOS for that machine for an option named "Memery Remapping" or similar and activate it. If it is not present that means that you will not get the 4GB, unless a newer BIOS supports it.
 
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Old 07-12-2014, 06:36 PM   #7
ReaperX7
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If it's a higher end video chipset like an ATI/AMD or Nvidia it could have a standard 256MB of RAM with a dynamically allocated 512MB Expansion Texture Buffer space in the BIOS also. If not, it could also be a bad memory stick.

You might want to run memtest86 against it to be certain.
 
Old 07-15-2014, 12:24 AM   #8
cwizardone
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Thanks to everyone for their replies.

Yes, as mentioned in the first post, the board is limited to 4 Gigs.
Yes, the motherboard has been flashed with the latest BIOS, but there is no memory remapping option.
No, it does not have a on-board video card.
Yes, the memory has been tested with Memtext86+ and it passed, no errors.

Memtest86+ showed the memory as,

Quote:
memory: 3326 2758MB/s
Chipset: Intel i945P/G
On the screen during the test there were several spaces, i.e., a long blank space, between 3326 and 2758. I'm not sure what the second number means.
As I said before, the BIOS shows 4 Gigs installed.
I've search the Dell site and haven't, yet, found anything about a limitation on useable RAM.

Last edited by cwizardone; 07-15-2014 at 12:27 AM.
 
Old 07-15-2014, 03:08 AM   #9
Labinnah
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Are you sure this is 64bit Slackware? It looks like 32bit without "High Memory Support" compilled into kernel.
 
Old 07-15-2014, 03:48 AM   #10
phenixia2003
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Hello,

Quote:
Originally Posted by cwizardone View Post
Thanks to everyone for their replies.

Memtest86+ showed the memory as,

Code:
memory: 3326 2758MB/s
Chipset: Intel i945P/G
According to this page, the intel 945P/G chipsets support up to 4GB of RAM, but does not support remapping of PCIE/APIC memory, therefore the useable memory is limited to about 3.5 GB.

Code:
Chipset  Code Name  Part numbers  South Bridge  Release Date  Supported Processors  FSB (MHz)     Memory Types     Max. Memory

945P     Lakeport   82945P (MCH)  ICH7/ICH7R    May 2005      Pentium 4, ....       533/800/1066  DDR2 400/533/667  4 GB[*]
945G     Lakeport-G 82945G (GMCH) ICH7/ICH7R    May 2005      Pentium 4, ....       533/800/1066  DDR2 400/533/667  4 GB[*]

[*] Remapping of PCIE/APIC memory ranges not supported,[26] some physical memory might not be accessible (e.g. limited to 3.5 GB or similar).
-- SeB

Last edited by phenixia2003; 07-15-2014 at 03:49 AM.
 
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Old 07-15-2014, 08:05 AM   #11
TobiSGD
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cwizardone View Post
On the screen during the test there were several spaces, i.e., a long blank space, between 3326 and 2758. I'm not sure what the second number means.
The second number is the maximum speed of your RAM in MB/s.
 
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Old 07-15-2014, 01:10 PM   #12
cwizardone
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Labinnah View Post
Are you sure this is 64bit Slackware? It looks like 32bit without "High Memory Support" compilled into kernel.
Yes.


Quote:
Originally Posted by phenixia2003 View Post
Hello,
According to this page, the intel 945P/G chipsets support up to 4GB of RAM, but does not support remapping of PCIE/APIC memory, therefore the useable memory is limited to about 3.5 GB.

Code:
Chipset  Code Name  Part numbers  South Bridge  Release Date  Supported Processors  FSB (MHz)     Memory Types     Max. Memory

945P     Lakeport   82945P (MCH)  ICH7/ICH7R    May 2005      Pentium 4, ....       533/800/1066  DDR2 400/533/667  4 GB[*]
945G     Lakeport-G 82945G (GMCH) ICH7/ICH7R    May 2005      Pentium 4, ....       533/800/1066  DDR2 400/533/667  4 GB[*]

[*] Remapping of PCIE/APIC memory ranges not supported,[26] some physical memory might not be accessible (e.g. limited to 3.5 GB or similar).
-- SeB
Thanks. That answers the question. Greatly appreciated!



Quote:
Originally Posted by TobiSGD View Post
The second number is the maximum speed of your RAM in MB/s.
Thanks.

Last edited by cwizardone; 07-15-2014 at 01:12 PM.
 
  


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