Difference between usable and installed ram memory

Have you ever noticed if your computer is using all the installed RAM memory? Knowing the difference between usable RAM and installed RAM will save you a few headaches, especially if it is a laptop with an integrated graphics card or IGPU.

We all know, or should know, how much RAM is installed in our equipment. This will be as easy as looking at the specifications of our computer, either through the technical sheet or user manual of the equipment, if we have already bought it completely, or looking at it with some software from our operating system.

Index of contents

Know how much RAM I have installed

To know how much RAM we have installed, we have it quite simple, since through Windows we can find out this information directly. We only have to go to our file explorer, right click on " My Computer " and then " properties ".

Perfectly we see a section dedicated to RAM, in which we see that the available figure is 16 GB. Well this will be our installed memory. But we will still have a somewhat more advanced possibility of finding out this, we can even know brand, model, speed and configuration of installed memory.

With CPU-Z, an extremely simple free software to use, we will be able to find out all this. Once downloaded and installed, we are going to open it and go to the Memory section, where we are shown general information about RAM memory.

But we can still know more if we go to the "SPD" section to see what is installed in each memory slot on our motherboard. Click on the drop - down list of slots and select one of them. If it is blank it means that it is free, but if it is busy we will see something like this:

In the upper area we will identify that it is an 8 GB (8192 MB) DDR4 module of the G.Skill brand. Just below we will see the JEDEC profiles, which is basically the speed at which memory is able to work, and which will be determined by the chipset of the motherboard and the CPU.

My installed RAM is different from the one used

Well, let's recap backwards, because if you have been doing the same as us until now, you may have noticed that the installed memory on your PC does not match the memory used. And the truth is that this is not usually easy to identify and also has two different implications as we will now explain.

Usable RAM and different installed RAM in Windows system properties

The first one is identified through the Windows properties panel (where we have entered before). Here we will see a first value, which corresponds to the installed RAM, and another in brackets, which corresponds to the memory that can only be used. This may be due to two different factors:

That the operating system is 32-bit and the computer 64-bit: and what changes this? Well, a lot, since a 32-bit operating system is not capable of addressing more than 4 GB of RAM. If for example we had 8 GB, we would have 4 of them wasted. In any case, just below the RAM memory appears information related to the system, which in this case is not 32 bits. So memory loss is for another reason.

That the system dedicates part of the RAM memory to other functions such as graphics: in physical computers it is not usually common, although it is in virtual machines. It is true that on physical PCs and laptops they do reserve a percentage of memory for the graphics card, if it is internal, but it will not be reflected in this properties screen. Precisely this has been our case, the system has reserved a few GB for uses other than the system. Be careful, because it can also be due to a virus or some small hooligan program.

Solution to match installed memory to usable

This last point has a possible solution so that our PC is able to use all the installed memory. It will be through the " MSCONFIG " tool which we can use from the execute tool if we press " Windows + R " on our keyboard.

After pressing enter, a window opens where we will have to click on " advanced options " in the " start " tab. In this new one, we will find a box that says " maximum amount of memory ". We are going to activate it and place the maximum value that the system allows us, for example, it will be 8192 MB if we have 8 GB installed. Remember that they are always multiples of 1024 (8 × 1024 = 8192).

In addition, we will quickly know that we will be at the maximum if the arrow does not allow us to increase the value more. After setting the maximum value, we are going to deactivate the box again, accept both windows and restart the computer.

We will see that everything has returned to normal at best. If we have not managed to improve this, we can consider the possibility that this memory is really necessary for another controller, there is a virus, or we have a 32-bit operating system.

RAM memory dedicated to the internal graphics card (IGPU)

Having overcome the previous section and assumption, we are going to see the most common problem of all, although it is not really a problem and we are going to explain it.

When we have a computer without a dedicated graphics card, part of the RAM in the task manager will appear as shared. Keep in mind that when we do not have a graphics card, with its own memory, we are making use of the integrated graphics chip in the CPU. This implies that we need a percentage of RAM memory so that the system can store the graphics temporarily, so it must take part of the RAM memory.

In this case, it will not be possible to eliminate this shared RAM memory, although some BIOS allow us to modify this value to increase or decrease it. In any case, we must leave it at an acceptable value, because only Windows is going to need at least 128 or 256 MB to work. Of course if we want to watch video, render and, above all, play, we will need a lot of shared memory, and there is no other possibility than to throw out RAM.

See how much RAM is shared

Let's continue with the example of our laptop. This window will be obtained simply by opening the Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) and going to the " performance " tab.

Let's observe a curious thing, we have two GPUs available in the list, that means that one of them is the internal CPU card (Intel HD Graphics) and the other is the dedicated one (Nvidia MX), since this laptop has a dedicated card.

Well, even so, we see that on GPU 0 and GPU 1 there are two types of memory listed:

• Dedicated GPU memory: this is the memory of the graphics card. This memory is independent of the RAM of the equipment. In this case we will have 128 MB for the internal card and about 2 GB for the dedicated card. Shared GPU memory: This memory is automatically allocated by the system so that it can be used by the graphics card if the dedicated memory is completely full.

Can I use this shared memory?

From here we can draw two very important conclusions. The first is that, if we only have IGPU, we will need a percentage of shared memory, since 128 MB would be quite little (not to say unfeasible) if we want to play, render or watch video. The second is that, if we have a dedicated GPU, this shared memory will NOT be consumed by the card if it does not need it, and then it will be fully available to the operating system if necessary.

Then we should not be alarmed to see those 4 GB placed there in a shared way, although having a graphics card, if the system needs them, it will use them completely. Even on desktops we are going to see a certain amount of shared memory in this window.

Conclusion about usable RAM and installed RAM

With this little article, we hope you have a little more clarity on how the system and the computer manage and allocate RAM. It will always be more advisable to have a dedicated graphics card than an internal one, so you do not need to cut RAM memory, especially if we have a small quantity.

We also always recommend installing 64-bit Windows (or another system), as all computers are currently 64-bit and the memory limitations for a 32-OS are 4 GB. With the guidelines we have given, you will be able to identify why your PC has a different value of RAM to install and RAM used. And if you can't figure it out, well here we are to help you, or in our hardware forum, that there is always a community ready to help.

Now we will leave you a few tutorials so you know more about hardware.

And our hardware guide could not be missing either

What did you think of our article on usable RAM and installed RAM? Have you resolved all your doubts?