Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Resolved Question

Unidentified RAM slot?

Jul 22, 2018 10:42AM PDT

So I have a ASUS X551MA notebook with 4 gigs of RAM and windows 8.1 When I look in the task manager under performance, it says I have 3.8 gigs usable of 1333 MHz SO-DIMM, but only 1 of two slots used.
I have completely taken this laptop apart and I only have one slot why does it say i have two.
Is there some sort of soldered memory somewhere or can I upgrade to 8 gigs because i have seen people upgrade theirs with no problem and my CPU can support it, but I'm unsure because some of the X551MAs motherboards have two slots while the others have 1, and there is a lot of different people saying different things.
P.S. My CPU is a Intel celeron N2830 at 2.16 GHz (max 2.4)

P.P.S. Also i have found that when running a game like CS:GO, only 2000 Mb(approximately) are being used with another 1700 unused why is that, a limitation for the application to use, or a limitation for the computer to use. I have that, plus 114 Mb for hardware, and about 50 Mb that is "modified", whatever that means.

Post was last edited on July 22, 2018 10:55 AM PDT

Discussion is locked

DriftyESL has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

- Collapse -
So yes. You are not seeing things.
Jul 22, 2018 10:52AM PDT

To hit the lowest prices many makers omit the second socket but leave the circuitry unchanged. You saw this all the time with PCI and PCIe slots. Just run a Speccy report and you find, almost every time more PCIe slots than what's in a PC.

No mystery here.

Also the Official Max RAM is 4GB. http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-upgrade-for/ASUS/x551ma

And yes, some may find 8GB works but you can't complain if it doesn't.

-> ALL THAT ASIDE. If you are trying to eek out a little more speed overall, I suggest you replace the standard HDD with a SSD.

- Collapse -
I would love an SSD
Jul 22, 2018 11:07AM PDT

Alright thx for your help was just kinda confused about that, anything you know about the edited question?
also i do plan on getting an SSD just saving up money for a good one with a lot of storage space.

- Collapse -
What question?
Jul 22, 2018 11:15AM PDT

Please call out the questions. Better yet, number them so members can answer/respond to each question by number.

As to games that only use 2GB that's proper for 32 bit apps.

https://superuser.com/questions/1163749/why-do-32-bit-processes-have-a-2-gb-ram-limit is a technical back and forth on this so I'll consider that old question done.

Rather than GAMBLE on the 8GB stick, you should really consider the SSD as it's pretty much the only upgrade I see for this laptop. It can help get one to more frames per second since disk I/O is now much faster and you won't see that drive lag effect on graphics.

- Collapse -
Sorry to drag this on, having got my answer
Jul 22, 2018 12:03PM PDT

So what I'm reading is 32-bit applications, even on a 64-bit OS, are limited to just 2 gigs of RAM, and 4 gigs of RAM are separated into two 2 gig address spaces, one for processes, and one for system, so the CPU could see both the system and the processes that were waiting for instruction, instead of seeing just one, so does that mean that 8 gigs would mean 4 for each? not asking for upgrade reasons, but because I'm taking computer tech classes, and this was not in the RAM chapter. And if that is the answer, does that mean that if I have 64 gigs of RAM that 32 bit processes can only use 32 gigs of it, or is there some time of math that changes those values, so that the system has less RAM (because it doesn't need that much nowadays) and the processes have more?

Also i will number my questions from now on thx for the tip.

- Collapse -
Sorry no.
Jul 22, 2018 1:15PM PDT

32 bit apps are always limited to a 2GB size. It's well discussed so I have little more to offer on that.

But if your PC had the 64GB of RAM, the 32 bit app would again max out at 2GB. There's no mystery here. Just how things work to keep old apps running.

Giving more RAM than is needed for just the app is a good thing. Windows will use it for caching and such.

- Collapse -
Thanks
Jul 22, 2018 8:50PM PDT

Alright thanks for answering my questions, especially about the 32 bit applications