2Gb memory " Hardware reserved"

[Clanseven]

Hi,

My recently built pc seems to be working ok, but when I ran the Windows Experience Index, the lowest subscore was Memory with 5.5. As I have 4Gb of Corsair XMS in an overclocked system, this seemed strange. I then checked the Resource Monitor and to my amazment, found that 2082MB of Physical memory was Hardware Reserved, apparently for use by the bios, some drivers and other peripherals. This is surely too much, so any ideas what the problem is?

 

[Sweeney47]

weird, just checked mine and its 9MB reserved :s

 

[Gorman]

Hi!, first of all the Windows experience index is possibly the worst tool availiable for measuring performance, it should be ignored.

Memory management is not the same in 7 and Vista as it was in XP. That being the main difference is that there is a memory managment system other than rebooting the machine as per the old XP days.

Memory in use, especially by system components is always dynamic and on idle if it is showing 2gb that is absolutely fine, windows will surrender and reallocate memory on the fly when / if it is needed for a particular task. When the system is idle windows will see free resources and mark them for its own use. Should you then start up something demanding windows will surrender it.

Think of it along the system idle process lines, "why is system idle process using 99% of my cpu?" because nothing else is, and thats what its for.

 

[Clanseven]

Thanks for the input Gorman, but after speaking with Paul on the service line, I've now reseated the memory in different slots and all is well, with the Hardware Reserved memory falling to 34Mb.

 

[Gorman]

That could work too.

 

[Sleinous]

Ye should never be so high, this was another issue I read about on forums all over the place, randomly high hardware reserved amounts, even for onboard graphics that insanely high

 

[Gorman]

Ye should never be so high, this was another issue I read about on forums all over the place, randomly high hardware reserved amounts, even for onboard graphics that insanely high

Totally depends on your setup, mine is always high.

 

[Sleinous]

:O How does Windows calculate it? I saw mine go up on my netbook when I took out 1GB and added 2GB, but I guess this hasosmething to do with teh Intel HD Graphics inside, more RAM I guess means they can dedicate a little more to the display chip.

 

[Gorman]

Not sure how its calculated. I guess mine just sees 12gb and thinks wahey! lets have some of that.

 

[Sleinous]

Haha that sounds totally Windows-like. I think, when I play like GTA 4, it does kind of do this temporarily, even though my settinsg only use about 780MB of VRAM :/ Shouldnt need any system RAM but im sure it does use it, as well as teh RAm used to run the game files.