Hardware Reserved RAM Issue

[frung]

I have a gaming PC that I built about two years ago, and it had been running kind of slow. I added 8gb of ram to it, on top of the existing 4gb. In the process of doing this, I realized the reason it had been running so slow was that half of the ram was hardware reserved, and when I installed the new ram, it had the same problem (6 of 12 availible). I just want to know how to realocate my RAM, and I'm not sure whether I should do that through BIOS or with a third-party program. (I have an Asus P7p55d-LX motherboard and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit)

[[☥] - CJ -]

What GPU do you have?

And whats the rest of your specs?

Give this a read - http://superuser.com/questions/56157/why-is-all-my-extra-ram-marked-as-hardware-reserved-in-windows-7

According to the information its because of how you have the RAM setup. 1156 motherboards are Triple Channel correct? so you may need to have 3 DIMM slots populated with the correct RAM. Motherboard specs says it uses Dual Channel memory though.

All in all your RAM or the way you have it setup may not be supported.

Give this a read also - http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/290480-30-hardware-reserved

Also, are you absolutely positive you are on a 64bit OS?

[awesomepossum]

"Also, are you absolutely positive you are on a 64bit OS?"

other than that quote from cj, the mobo does support a 16gb max, so it is your bios settings. probly pci reserve or impropper settings like the command rate or timings... get the exact settings that are post to be used for your memory and put them in manualy or if they support xmp and u are not overclocking your bclk just turn on the xmp profile. if u are overclocking via blck not cpu multiplyer u will also need to under clock your memory and sometimes xmp profile will be unstable with a oc bclk even with a underclocked memory frequency, but setting xmp settings manualy with a bclk overclock and underclocking the frequency will work .... atleast on my mobo.. lol.

[Jørgen Oktober]

You don't want to reallocate RAM unless you have extremely specific tasks for your PC, like assembler programming or manufacturing hardware. You OS is supposed to hog down a deal of RAM to make your PC run more efficient (RAM not in use are wasted RAM). So

Troubleshooting is an art in itself. What you can start with is going to the startmenu, type "run" and enter "dxdiag", then print and post it here. It's going to be a wall of text, but it's not like you're paying per letter, so go ahead. On top of this post you write up all your hardware and peripherals that is connected. Also describe when the problem arose, other changes in hardware and so on. And don't be afraid of describing things in great detail, much can be read from it.

[frung]

my GPU is an Ati Radeon 5770, and I have 2 sets of dual channel. One is a corsair dual-channel 4gb, and one is a Kingston dual-channel 8gb. Both are DDR3-1333. I talked to tech support at microcenter, and they said I may have to play with my configuration a bit.

[[☥] - CJ -]

have you tried just using 8GB? Try just 2 sticks of RAM and see what it says(Best if both sticks are the same brand if possible) Plus, you are essentially trying to run in Triple channel and not Dual channel. Dual channel is 2 matching RAM sticks or 4 matching RAM sticks, 3 would be triple channel of which is not supported as im sure ur aware.

Btw, you arent supposed to mismatch RAM, its best if you match RAM with the same brand.

Chances are it just doesnt like the RAM setup you have in addition to the mismatched RAM.

Corsair would be the better brand btw.

All in all i believe your problem to be the way you have the RAM setup.

Try 2 sticks

These are the 4 DIMM Slots | | | | Try 2 sticks in the 2nd and 4th slot, | 4 | 4 or 4 | 4 | depending on how your motherboard handles it of which ud need to read the manual to figure out the proper DIMM spot.

[rotNdude]

I'm guessing it's how you have the RAM situated in the DIMM slots.

[[☥] - CJ -]

Agreed.

as i said that would be like a triple channel setup and as its a dual channel board it doesnt support it.

If changing the positions of the RAM doesnt solve ur problem, you can try updating your BIOS to version 1602 as it improves memory compatibility(which may be a possible fix) and system stability

[[☥] - CJ -]

i was thinking that for a while, but not all motherboards have that in BIOS do they? maybe thats his problem.

[frung]

Yeah it seems like most people think its the DIMM configuration. I'll test it out soon if i ever find the time.