Notebook not showing correct memory (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

My brother came up to visit this week
and brought home a new Sony Vaio notebook
he had just bought for his job.

Being curious, I wanted to know what
features he got for the money he paid.

Went into Control Panel -> System and
looked at the GENERAL tab which gives
a quick look at the specs.

The memory was listed as 486 (or something
close to that number).

"That's odd," I thought. "Either this
computer is going to have 256 or 512 memory
installed."

Looked up the Sony Model # and the specs
say that the computer should have 512 memory.

Why is it listing only 486? If memory serves
me correct doesn't the GENERAL tab tell you
the amount installed?

Thanks for the help.

 

[Marko Berg]

Perhaps that model has a video card that is integrated into the motherboard. Such systems usually reserve part of the RAM for the video card.

Some systems allow you to change the amount of RAM that is reserved for the video card. If the Sony allows this, see if the amount of RAM available to Windows will increase or decrease after fiddling with the video memory settings.

 

[DaveNel]

Thats exactly correct, memory in laptops do have wierd numbers just for that reason..

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Yup, sounds like that model uses "shared" video memory, allocating system RAM to the on-board video card which has no dedicated RAM of its own, or which supplements a limited amount of video RAM as needed. 26 MB sounds like reasonable amount to reserve for that.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Peter Kim]

Checked the same on mine and it appears that it varies for different setups/manufacturers.

My Toshiba Satellite, which I thought to have 512 MB of RAM, lists 480 MB of RAM.

I do know that my notebook doesn't have dedicated video memory.

 

[Tekara]

heh, usually don't see this as much with RAM, but it's a result of misleading advertising.

What's hapenning is that the ram was sold under the decimal system, but your computer uses the binary system. So 512 in decimal comes out to roughly just over 488.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Er, "No"

 

[Tekara]

512 * 1000 * 1000 = 512,000,000

512,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 = 488.24MB

My math looks fine to me.

 

[DaveNel]

Looks good to me, That looks like a A+ example of the decimal

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

The math may be right, but the assumption that the system application in the Control Panel showing actual RAM is not.

On my laptop, with 512MB memory and 32MB of dedicated video card memory, the system application says "512 MB RAM" as clear as day.

The Vaio almost certainly has some lame duck graphics card that steals system memory.