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Date:      Fri, 19 Aug 2005 22:17:06 +0000
From:      "Mikhail P." <miha@ghuug.org>
To:        freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: 4 GB RAM showing up as 3, BIOS memory hole and all that
Message-ID:  <200508192217.06403.miha@ghuug.org>
In-Reply-To: <43020F08.6070108@samsco.org>
References:  <20050815125657.A92343@cons.org> <20050816111428.A24284@cons.org> <43020F08.6070108@samsco.org>

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On Tuesday 16 August 2005 16:06, Scott Long wrote:
> Intel Xeon systems typically do the remapping trick, so when you boot
> FreeBSD i386+PAE or amd64 on them, they might show 4.5GB of RAM when
> there reall is only 4GB (this is a limitation of how we compute RAM and
> is purely cosmetic, but should be fixed).  Many AMD Opteron systems do
> not do the remapping and result in you loosing effective RAM.  The
> difference between Intel and AMD is because AMD puts the memory
> controller into the CPU instead of in the PCI host bridge, so it's much
> harder to have the two work together to do the remapping.  I believe
> that there are some Opteron systems that can do this, though.
>
> A junior doc writer task would be for someone to collect all of the
> email responses that I give on this topic (I seem to get at least one
> query a month) and turn it into an FAQ for the FreeBSD doc set.
>
> Scott

Here's a dual opteron system we've got recently. Currently it runs=20
=46reeBSD-4.11 GENERIC kernel (just fresh installed).
It has 4GB of actual RAM, and OS sees it:

CPU: AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 246 (1992.77-MHz 686-class CPU)
=A0 Origin =3D "AuthenticAMD" =A0Id =3D 0xf5a =A0Stepping =3D 10
=A0=20
=46eatures=3D0x78bfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE=
,MCA,CMO
V,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2>
=A0 AMD Features=3D0xe0500000<<b20>,AMIE,<b29>,DSP,3DNow!>
real memory =A0=3D 4227792896 (4128704K bytes)
avail memory =3D 4117520384 (4021016K bytes)

I'm not sure what BIOS settings it uses (system is overseas), but it is bui=
lt=20
on identical Celestia barebone:

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=3DPROD&Store_Co=
de=3DM&Product_Code=3D100944&Category_Code=3D1U

M.



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