I have recently purchased 8GB of RAM to upgrade my system to go along with a new shiney i5! When I run speed checks on my system it online I get told I only have 3.5GB of RAM, also in the task manager I only see around that value of RAM yet that stupid Windows rating Index tells me I have 8.0GB Any Ideas what I am doing/reading/interpreting incorrectly?!?! See below what I see:
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You have a 32 bit operating system. Because of this, your computer can only address 4GB of the available RAM. That means, no matter how much you can stuff into your board ( or how much your board can handle ( as that could also be an issue )) your OS will only ever be able to work with 4GB of it. The only real fix is to upgrade to a 64bit operating system. | |||||
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The clue is in the screenshot you provided, you're running a 32 bit OS which will only support 4GB of RAM:
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You have a 32-bit version of Windows, which can only use 4GB maximum because 2^32 is 4294967296. Some of that 4GB is used for other purposes, so 3.5GB is about the best you can do without a 64-bit OS. | |||
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According to Microsoft, 32-bit versions of Windows 7 (which you are using) are limited to 4GB of physical memory.
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