[Leaplist] Only seeing 3G memory

[Bryan J. Smith]

From: Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>
> It won't be an error.  After all, your BIOS thinks you
> only have 3GiB.

More accurately, it thinks you have 3GiB - your UMA for
video RAM.  I'd be interested to know your reservation
for the Xpress 200's on-board video which uses systems
memory.

Again, I'm not kidding on many "AMD 64-bit" systems
boasting how "AMD 64-bit breaks the 4GiB barrier" only
to totally limit at 3GiB, as most 3-4GiB (typically at
3.2-3.5GiB) for memory mapped I/O (below 4GiB).

They utterly fail to allow any x86_64 kernel (or i686 PAE
kernel for that matter) remap the 3-4GiB above 4GiB so it
can be accessed and used ("around" the memory mapped I/O
below 4GiB).

That's always the problem, and there is a lot of junk
hardware out there with marketing to the contrary.  You
should have been there when Tyan released its first Opteron
prototypes back in 2003 and people were PO'd about those
3.5GiB issues when they'd load it up with 4-8GiB.  ;)

Consumers were still running into that as late as 2007
BIOS updates.  ;)

-- 
Bryan J Smith        Professional, Technical Annoyance
b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
------------------------------------------------------
I'm a PC, but Linux -- Windows: Life Without Firewalls


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