ASUS Motherboard Max. RAM...?

Synthros

Anyone have (or know anyone who has) an ASUS M4A785T-M/CSM motherboard? I've been considering picking one up, but I have a concern: it states that it can handle up to 16GB of RAM, but I've read in a few places that people are only able to make it up to 8GB at best (4GB in most cases). Word has it that it is an ASUS problem with this particular board, and not a RAM manufacturer or generic configuration problem.

tiersten

The 4GB reports are from people that aren't running a 64 bit OS so they're stuck with a 4GB address space minus whatever the graphics card and motherboard wants to reserve for MMIO.

I'd just assume that the board can only take a maximum of 8GB. It appears to be a BIOS issue where the board doesn't recognise 4GB DIMMs even though there is one listed on the "Qualified Vendors List" for that board. I wouldn't hold my breath to wait for the possible future BIOS upgrade that in theory allows you to use 4GB DIMMs.

Hyper-Me

Then why not get a different board?

Synthros

Thanks for the response tiersten. Would you recommend avoiding this particular board, then, due to the limitation? The reason I want the 16GB support is to be able to run multiple VMs with less hiccups.

Synthros

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Then why not get a different board?

That's what I was wondering, but I might be missing something. Would anything over 8GB still be allocated correctly in Windows 7 64-bit with VMs?

Synthros

Is 16GB of RAM in Windows 7 (64-bit) considered wasted resources in a similar way to how putting 4GB RAM into a Windows XP box was considered wasteful? I know that Windows 7 would *recognize* 16GB of RAM, but I wonder if there's a point of diminishing returns; would it all be usable by the OS?

tiersten

Synthros wrote: »

Is 16GB of RAM in Windows 7 (64-bit) considered wasted resources in a similar way to how putting 4GB RAM into a Windows XP box was considered wasteful? I know that Windows 7 would *recognize* 16GB of RAM, but I wonder if there's a point of diminishing returns; would it all be usable by the OS?

4GB in a Windows XP box was pointless because XP is mainly 32 bit and it can't use the full 4GB. You could get a 64 bit version of XP but it wasn't widespread due to the problems of getting 64 bit drivers back then.

Windows 7 or Vista 64 bit will work fine with 16GB so long as you've got the correct edition. The maximum memory for Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise/Professional is 192GB. Home Premium can do 16GB. Home Basic can do 8GB and Starter can do 4GB.

Windows won't use that much memory apart from as a disk cache. You install that much so your applications like VMware can use it.

As for whether you should get that motherboard, I'd say no. Find another one that doesn't have this problem.

ajmatson

I am using this board for my server ( GA-MA785GMT-UD2H (rev. 1.0) - GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Overview ) Which is the same chipset and running an Athlon II X4 635 CPU with 8GB Mushkin DDR3-1600MHz memory. I have Server 2008 Standard installed with two more instances of Server 2008 and one instance of Ubuntu Server 9.10 with 2GB per each OS and it is snappy as can be. The board can be picked up for $89 from Newegg. I have attached a picture of it mounted in a 3U case to see it, this was before the memory upgrade however.