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I have laptop Asus N53SV with 4 GB of RAM, i7 with integrated card and dedicated GPU. My problem on Fedora is that system reports only 2.6 GB RAM. I know that I should use kernel with PAE but even after I install it, I have only 2.6 GB RAM avaiable. Now I use 3.0.0 rc6 kernel, but still nothing. Is it possible that the integrated GPU uses almost 1GB of RAM ? Can I check it somehow?

$ free
Non-standard uts for running kernel:
release 3.0-0.rc6.git6.1.fc15.i686=3.0.0 gives version code 196608
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2752180    2527816     224364          0      11232     499444
-/+ buffers/cache:    2017140     735040
Swap:      4849660     500048    4349612

dmidecode http://pastebin.com/CNrph9KA kernel logs http://pastebin.com/QvqUmEZb

sebastian
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    See [this related question](http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/15256) about the non-PAE case. With a PAE kernel, what tool reported 2.6GB? Post the output of `free`. Also post the kernel logs from around boot time (in `/var/log/kern.log`, I think), especially [the ones I cite in my answer](http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/15266#15266). The output of `dmidecode` (very long, use http://pastebin.com/ or similar) might have relevant information. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 13 '11 at 12:10
  • I checked it with free and in System Monitor. Both of this tools shows ~2.6 GB. – sebastian Jul 13 '11 at 13:26
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    That log is from a non-PAE kernel, and as far as I understand this is as much as you can get from a non-PAE kernel on your hardware. There's ~1.3GB of RAM that the kernel can't map because it's above the 4GB address map (last `BIOS-e820:` line). With a PAE kernel this part should be in use; please post the logs when you boot a PAE kernel. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 13 '11 at 13:59

2 Answers2

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Is it possible that the integrated GPU uses almost 1GB of RAM?

Easily. Many integrated GPUs do not have their own dedicated memory, instead using a portion of the system memory carved out by the BIOS.

Can I check it somehow?

Probably. Check the BIOS settings, and/or the system manual. You should be able to control the memory allocation from there. (If you can't find your copy of the manual, you can find a PDF version on Asus' site for the machine, on the Downloads tab.)

Charles
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Is it 64 bit or not? I believe the cutoff point is around 3.25gB that a 32 bit OS can handle, so it wouldn't fully utilize it due to addressing issues.

baweaver
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