Hey everyone. I have been searching google and these forums but I haven;t had any luck with this question. I have 4 gb of RAM with 4 1gb sticks. When I have all 4 gigs installed windows shows only 2 gb of ram. When I have 3 sticks (3gb) of ram installed xp shows 2.86gb of ram. I know that I will not be able to see the whole 4 gigs in my 32-bit operating system. My main question is why do I see less memory when I have the whole 4 gigs installed than when I have the 3 gigs installed?
Would there be any improvements in performance having all 4 sticks in because of dual channel mode? I know all 4 gigs would not be usable. Or would having just 3 gig sticks be the same?
I have heard this may be fixable with a motherboard bios flash but I am not sure which one to use because there are reports of some bios versions causing problems or being worse for overclocking.
Also is it ok to combine a spd ram pair with a non spd ram pair if they are the same otherwise? Would it be better if I had all spd or all non spd?
My system setup
asus p5b deluxe wifi motherboard bios version 0711
core 2 duo e6400
4x1 gb gskill pc6400 ddr2 ram sticks
windows xp 32 bit sp 2
Thank you so much for your help.