Aspire 5580: BIOS only recognizes 3 out of 4GB of RAM

Hello, anyone using Acer Aspire 5580 having the same problem? I've upgraded my BIOS driver to 1.3508 and it only shows 3GB of RAM. With the previous driver version 1.3505 somehow I couldn't make it to the Windows GUI while having 4GB of RAM installed.

I've made a lot of study on the internet, looks like it's a common problem with intel chipset 945PM. I'm using Windows 7 x64, btw.

So what am I gonna do now? Live with it, knowing that I'm a victim of advertising claiming that yeah it's good, it supports up to 4GB of RAM blah blah blah and that I've wasted a whole 1GB of RAM just because of some limitation of yesterday technology.

 

That's pretty much what it is, there is no fix.

 

Maybe because the chipset doesn't support 2GB sticks...or should I say 2x2GB sticks?



Source: http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/309219.pdf

 

Oh thanks for the info, I didn't know that. Obviously I should have made some research before upgrading to 4GB, my bad

 

True ... but it says the maximum amount of RAM supported is 4GB.
So hypothetically it should be possible.

Did you upgrade your BIOS to the latest version?
Usually RAM limitations of this kind are restricted to the earlier BIOS versions and can be fixed with flashing it to the latest version.
Now I cannot guarantee it would work 100%, but it's worth a try for example.
Make sure you download the latest BIOS version appropriate for your laptop (go to Acers webpage and download from there) and upgrade either via DOS flashing or Windows.
I used Windows to flash my BIOS on my 5930G and everything worked fine.
I was also limited to only 3GB ram before upgrading the BIOS ... then again, my chipset is PM45.

Although, something doesn't jibe here right.
How many RAM slots do you have in your laptop?
2, 3 or 4?
Because if you have 2 slots ... and working 3GB of RAM, that means that the chipset supports 2GB in one stick ... otherwise it wouldn't work ... unless one slot supports 2GB sticks and the other only 1 ... which doesn't jibe with the specs really.

So I'm a bit confused here.
You could also try to test out the RAM sticks individually ... by booting the laptop with only 2GB in one slot ... then changing the stick to the other slot and booting like that ... ultimately checking how much RAM BIOS sees each time (or even Windows).
And repeat the process with the other stick of course.


It's also possible that one of the RAM sticks is faulty.
But if both sticks pass the testing in both slots, then it's a limitation of the chipset with which you have to live with I'm afraid, unless Acer releases a new BIOS version that would take care of that problem

 

It also says 32-bit interface to address memory. It won't work.

 

Well 32bit OS-es can detect 4GB of ram, it's just that it will usually reserve 1 or half of GB for something else.

 

Explaining this in a bad way, the chipset is reserving space for addresses or something there, or is it there aren't enough addresses to map the whole RAM.. I'm bloody confusing myself..

 

That's how the OS would do it.
However, if the chipset's RAM interface is 32bit ... then yes, there's a possibility it really wouldn't be able to recognize over 3GB RAM.
Then again, the chipset itself supports C2D cpu's ... a lot of which are 64bit ... so it's a bit of a contradiction in itself.

 

More than likely it just means its supports (4x1gb) but not (2x2gb).

 

But that was only later. The first round of CPU's supported by the chipset were 32-bit only.

 

Thanks for all of your info.

About the BIOS, I have the latest version according to Acer's website: version 1.3508. My laptop has 2 RAM slots. The RAM sticks are working fine as far as I know. I'm not sure about 2x2GB compatibility, will try to check each slot individually this weekend.

However I've just noticed something which is quite interesting. In Windows 7, it reports that installed memory is 4GB, usable is 3GB - no surprise since the BIOS only recognizes 3GB of RAM. But what interesting here is in dxdiag, the display tab reports that I have a total of 1400 MB of graphics memory for use! Originally I only have 128 MB of dedicated graphics memory, so does it mean that the absent 1GB of RAM is now set to be VGA shared memory? I'm confused now. Is it true that I really have that much of memory for VGA?

Here's the pic:

 

Probably true ... because the OS has a tendency to reserve the unused RAM for other devices if it cannot use it ... the gpu being a notable example in this case.
Your gpu has only 128Mb ram ... but it's capable of sharing the unused ram ... so in this case, the system allocated it to the gpu

 

Deks it does not work that way, even shared graphics ram must be present in the 4GB limit.

Are you sure it did not ship with 2x2gb and you are just not seeing the unused amount?

 

Finally I see someone with the same problem but I'm usng Vista Home for Aspire 5580. I just bought 2 x 2gb rams. It runs but graphics goes to low res and 16 colors I think. If I remove and leave 1 2gb it runs with no problems in the graphics. Hope you find a solution. By the way, did you mean you opened using Windows 7 without any problems with graphics except that it uses only 3gb max of your 4 gb memory?

Thanks.