About my computer's memory...?

About a year ago I bought an HP ENVY 14 1095, with:

4GB of DDR3@1066Mhz,

an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 1GB,

and an Intell i5 m520@2.4GHz.



Now, when I checked the specs it says the amount of usable RAM is 3.8GB, what I need to know is what is using the other 256MB?



Second, I want to know the EXACT amount of "Graphics" Memory and "Video" Memory I've got installed... I doubted because it says on the device specs: "Resolution: 1600x900, Total arox. Memory: 2705MB %26lt;-- What's this???



Thank you for your help, I'm a HUGE noob, please don't kill me.About my computer's memory...?
Its because most laptops that come with a dedicated graphics card, also have an integrated graphics chipset (used for power saving). And that integrated chip dedicated itself 256mb of your ram to be its video memory. Im sure you can change it in the bios to ONLY use the dedicated card, and that should release your ram.



s for the second question, i would guess its the max memory total between both graphics combined.

1600something mb for the integrated chip, and 1024mb from the card. As most integrated chips can use up to 1600 something mb of ram, which would be completely pointless though lol.

(im just giving a guess, im not exactly sure).
If you are getting 3.8 GB of usable ram from 4GB that is really good. You usually get less than that. I have 4 GB and it shows i am getting 3.78 GB of usable ram. It's just like I have a 1 TB HDD and it shows the usable amount

is 931 GB out of the total 1000 GB. The formatting etc.. uses the rest.About my computer's memory...?
The 'missing' 256MB is exactly the amount of the graphics memory. The integrated graphics controller does not have its own, it uses the system memory.
This is usually down to either memory being shared against a graphics card or a motherboard limitation that prevents 4GB of memory being accessible.
If you are running a 32bit operating system, eg standard Windows 7 or Vista then it can only see just over 3.5GB of RAM.



Run DXDIAG to see details about your graphics card memory.
i got 4 gb ram with only 3.2 usable...big deal...usable ram is always a lil less

miata

just tires