Vista Screwed up Memory

[Murakawa]

Hey, I just bought a new acer laptop with 1 Gig of ram, however vista control panel system properties says i only have 766MB. Is this just what it's reading it at and the rest is taken up by vista, or did they send me too little ram?

Thanks for help.

[willw9]

You should really have 2GB RAM to run Vista anyway.

[LuckyTxGuy]

That replay was totally unhelpful to the OP, especially since the comments aren't 100% true.

1 GB will run Vista Home Basic just fine. More than just fine, I'll go as far as to say great, if you are using it for normal basic computer stuff. I've ordered around 6 Vista machines in the last 45 days for customers, all having 1 GB of RAM and they run great. Can I tell the difference when I'm running my 2 GB Vista laptop? Sure, but 2 GB is not "needed" for email, music, movies, web browsing, basic poker etc.

I just want to point out that the 2 GB line of thought is a myth. I compare it to XP...... XP will run just fine with 512 MB for basic stuff. However, 1 GB will make an XP machine smoke. Vista 1 GB is fine....2 GB smokes! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

To answer the OP's question, I have a very strong feeling the reason you are only seeing 766 MB is because you have a 256 MB integrated video card. 256 + 766 = 1022. 1 GB = 1024 MB. So your video card is using 256 MB of your RAM. I'm willing to bet money that's what is going on.

Now....I just gave my little spill above about not "needing" 2 GB, however the difference in 766 MB and 1 GB is 25%, that's alot in the scheme of things. If there was any way for you to cheaply upgrade your RAM from 1 GB to 1.5 or 2 GB that would be very beneficial and cause a noticeable improvement in your machines performance IMO.

- Jason

[CT11]

IGD really should NOT be using 256mb of ram. If it is you should change it in your BIOS. somewhere in the setup options you should be able to choose the amount of memory it takes. 64mb or even 32mb is appropriate not 256. It may help if you can tell us exactly what computer you have though at the very least we need to know if you have discrete graphics or integrated graphics.

[Murakawa]

Hmm... i have a feeling that you're right about the video card. So i have to change this in the bios? Sure windows doesn't have something to let me do it?

And I'll probably upgrade ram in the future, but I just spent a bunch of money on a new computer, not interested in upgrading quite yet.

[centgas]

I ordered 4gb RAM and it says I only have 3gb?