If I'm not mistaken the missing 1MB is being used by your integrated Video....




Cowboy Wisdom:
"If you get to thinkin' you're a person of influence, try orderin' someone else's dog around."
- Bob -
7XDB8

Thanks for your responses. I have the nVidia GeForce2 GTS 4X AGP card w/ 32 mb DDR. Therefore, the video should not be taking that 1 mb of ram, right??

I wouldn't think so. Maybe one of the DellTalk Moderators will respond to this.




Cowboy Wisdom:
"If you get to thinkin' you're a person of influence, try orderin' someone else's dog around."
- Bob -
7XDB8

riverrat wrote:
- This question will be short and sweet. I have a new
- 4100 p933 w/ 256 mb of ram running Win98. System
- Properties reports only 255.0 mb of ram. (not a
- major problem, but I have never experienced this
- inequality). Dell tech support could not explain
- the discrepancy either. Any info. would be
- appreciated.


The 815E chipset takes 1 MB of system ram to be able to run a default VGA video mode.

Even though the Dell mobo doesn't have intergrated video the BIOS still assigns this 1MB for legacy VGA.


From a White paper on the chipset from Intel® 815E chipset see the section for the White Paper: Dynamic Video Memory Technology.



Legacy VGA Memory

DVMT is a unique architecture that only uses 1MB from the system’ s physical memory. This 1MB is
required for legacy VGA graphics support and compatibility. Upon boot the BIOS allocates 1 MB out of
main memory for VGA graphics. An example of when VGA graphics memory is needed would be running
under DOS when there is no driver loaded. Once the operating system boots this 1MB is not seen and is
not visible by the operating system.