# 8GB ram installed, but only using 3.5GB (FreeBSD 7.1 AMD64)



## matthew (Feb 22, 2009)

Installed FreeBSD 7.1 AMD64 on a system with 8GB ram, when boot, BIOS shows 8192MB ram installed, but for some reason in FreeBSD I can't get it to use more than 3.5GB.

I tested the ram sticks on another machine, they worked fine, the only PCI card on the motherboard is an Intel NIC.

I also did some googling and tried different combinations of memory hole settings in BIOS, none of them helped, FreeBSD is still using only 3.5GB ram.

Any ideas?


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## graudeejs (Feb 22, 2009)

do you use generic kernel? (I'm not 101% sure, but i think generic is for i386 only, meaning max ram 4GB unless PAE enabled in custom kernel)
Or custom kernel for amd64?


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## matthew (Feb 22, 2009)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> do you use generic kernel? (I'm not 101% sure, but i think generic is for i386 only, meaning max ram 4GB unless PAE enabled in custom kernel)
> Or custom kernel for amd64?



It's on a custom kernel, based on a copy of the default /usr/src/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC.


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## matthew (Feb 22, 2009)

argh, problem solved.

I had "options MAXMEM" in the kernel config, it was copied from a previous config on another machine that had weird issues with 4GB ram on an ASUS motherboard.

Removed options MAXMEM, recompiled, now FreeBSD is showing 8GB


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