Dave Mazza sent me an e-mail today that caused me to check my RAM configuration under Win7 x64. He mentioned he'd done his upgrade, having the same processor as I do (Intel Core 2 Duo E6600), but was only seeing 3.12 GB of RAM as being available to Windows. He went on to mention having done some research and talked to the tech support for his motherboard vendor (ASUS, same as mine, though it's possible we have different actual motherboards -- mine is ASUS P5W DH Deluxe), basically finding that his motherboard was mapping out the rest of the RAM up to his 4 GB configuration, and that his BIOS lacked a remapping option to prevent this. Well, I'd never really looked into this area on my own system, or, if I did, just ignored it. See the big win for me with going to Win x64 for SONAR wasn't so much that I needed Windows to use the full 4 GB of RAM I have installed, but, rather, that I needed SONAR to be able to access more than 2 GB of application space for softsynths and the line, and I really haven't had any problems of that sort since upgrading to Win7 x64 and SONAR x64. However, once I found where to look in my configuration, I noted it had the same reading as Dave's did -- i.e. only 3.12 GB available to Windows. I initially theorized that might just be a fact of life with some motherboards, and that going up to, say, an 8 GB configuration would still result in some of that being eaten away for hardware mapping. However, then I did a quick Google search that shot that theory all to hell. I came across a post by someone complaining he only had 3.12 GB of RAM available to Windows on an 8 GB configuration! It turns out, there was a BIOS flag he needed to set to turn on memory remapping, and doing that on his system cured his problem. Looking for the similar feature in my BIOS, I found it under Advanced Chipset Management, where the feature was named Memory Remapping Feature. The help said to disable it for 32-bit OSes and enable it for 64-bit OSes. It was disabled. I enabled it, and now I have my full 4.00 GB of RAM showing up as available to Windows. So now I wonder if my system, which was already performing plenty well, will even do better since it has an extra 0.88 GB of RAM available? Rick ======================================= Rick Paul Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP) Web: http://www.RickPaul.info Studio: http://studio.RickPaul.info =======================================
