Question : Problem: CPU and memory report on OS

A description of this strange problem:

I have new PC install with the following hardware:

Intel Duo Core 2.4Ghz
Memory: 6Gb DDR2
Gigabyte P35-DS3P
Gigabyte ATI PCI Express 256MB Graphic Card

I was testing multiple WIndows OS each with fresh install and the CPU and physical memory installed varied

1. Windows 2003 ENTERPRISE edition

From System Information, it display CPU as Pentium D 3.20Ghz and memory is 3.5GB

2. Windows Vista Ultimate

CPU report as Pentium D 3.20Ghz and memory is 3.50GB

3. Windows 2008 ENTERPRISE edition beta 1

CPU report as Pentium D 3.20Ghz and memory is 6GB

From reading many articles in EE and Microsoft and also Gigabyte, depending on the chipset of the motherboard, the operating system will detect different memory installed and the RAM that are not reported are actually used as background IO and will not display in the OS.

However, just when I am starting to be convinced of this problem. Just for the sake of testing I installed Windows 2008 Enterprise Beta 1 and the memory is reported as 6GB!! This is somewhat very strange.

The CPU has not been overclocked and I used the same harddisk to install all of the above OS.

So far, I have seen HP DL320 did this before where the server was installed with 4GB RAM and  it has installed with Windows server 2003 standard, the OS report is only has 3.5GB RAM but the CPU is correct.

I have also seen a HP server DL 580 with Windows server2003 enterprise installed and it has 8GB RAM and it reported correctly.

Has anyone encounter this before?
 

Answer : Problem: CPU and memory report on OS

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