4GB ram installed -> 3.2Gb ram shown in Dashboard
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Why?
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I have 3.7GB showing….
You must be doing something weird.........
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some chipsets can't use more than 3.2GB maybe that's your problem.
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How can I check if the problem is in the chipset, and how can I try to resolve this?
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Isn't there somewhere during the install, where it ask's about memory configuration???
Cant remember….long time since last install :)
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How can I check if the problem is in the chipset, and how can I try to resolve this?
Can you check what chipset is on your board? if it's a 915 intel, then you might have a problem. Also, do you have all mem banks ocupied?
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The "standard" i386 page table entry maps the 32-bit virtual address to a 32 bit physical address allowing up to 4GB to be addresses. Some of the address space is reserved for CPU specific functions, chipset functions, addressing "memory" registers of PCI devices, memory for integrated video devices etc. Typically 512MB to 1GB is reserved for these uses and is therefore unavailable for RAM. This is the reason that a number of web sites of motherboard manufacturers carry a warning that the 32 bit version of windows can address only "about" 3GB of memory. The same restriction applies to the 32 bit version of FreeBSD and hence to pfSense. If I recall correctly, when calculating "available" memory, FreeBSD subtracts from the ram size given by the BIOS, memory needed to hold page tables and page usage information .
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Why?
If you've onboard graphics enabled, reduce the amount of memory allocated to it.
4GB in a 32 bit system.. You'll typically see 3.75GB at most. If you've an external graphics card with 256MB of memory, you'll see 3.5GB so on and so forth.
Now, if you have onboard gfx and allocate 256MB of memory, you'll end up seeing only 3.25GB (256MB lost to the IGP and another 256MB to "shadow" it)
The most reduction I've seen in a 32bit OS (WinXP) is ~2.1GB addressable by the system. System had 2 graphics cards with a total of close to 1.5GB of graphics memory.
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How can I check if the problem is in the chipset, and how can I try to resolve this?
Can you check what chipset is on your board? if it's a 915 intel, then you might have a problem. Also, do you have all mem banks ocupied?
It was already said by wallybybob…this wont be able to be fixed. 64-bit systems/software will fix this limitation you will need to ensure your hardware/software both support 64-bit to take advantage of 4 gigs or more of ram.
copied from FAQ's to answer you next question...pfsense does not work in 64-bit mode yet...so we'll just have to wait...It's fast enough the way it is for me and probably all of us though. :)
Does pfSense support 64 bit systems?
From PFSenseDocsYes, but only in 32 bit mode. There are numerous installations running on 64 bit processors from Intel and AMD, but 64 bit mode is not yet supported (and not needed for firewall scenarios).