Acer Aspire R15 (R5-571T-57Z0) Has 4GB RAM?

JBSINGMED
JBSINGMED Member Posts: 4 New User
edited March 2023 in 2017 Archives

I recently purchased 4 Acer Aspire R15 (R5-571T-57Z0).

 

Upon receiving them the first thing I do is open them up to see how well the laptop was assembled, the quality of components, and just a general check that everything matches up. 

I UNDERSTAND EMBEDDED ONBOARD MEMORY.

First what stood out to me is the fact that the ram is a single set ram stick, its a 4gb, 1x4

So online and on the box, aswell as any internal system diagnostics shows the computer at 8GB OF RAM YET my 
virtual page file is only 2GB, which was auto set by the OS. 

TYPICALLY the OS assigns the PAGEFILE TO BE 50% OF TOTAL AVAILABLE RAM, Meaning only 4GB.


After a restart of the system, Immediatly checking my resource manager, and performance monitor aswell as a variety of baselining/diagnostic programs.
My results: 4gb is ALWAYS in STANDBY, Leaving it unusable to the entire system and essentially making this a 4gb laptop advertised as 8gb????


Also, as a side note, 2/5 of the diagnostic programs showed one as a micron stick, A single set stick running in single channel, BUT SOMEHOW when i check other programs, and look at the GENERAL ram, it says its 8GB DUAL-CHANNEL ram sticks, yet the ram stick inserted in a single channel single stick.


ACER, PLEASE CLEAR UP THIS CONFUSION AND LET ME KNOW WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON.

 

Best Answer

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder
    Answer ✓

    It is the "cached" that has me curious. Back in the last century there were highly reliable Tandem computers with an OS called Non-Stop that used mirrored memory (kind of like a RAID disk array). It could be repaced on the fly.

     

    What does RamMap (Microsoft tool) show, both Use Counts and Physical Ranges, possibly that will have a clue.

Answers

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    What is the relevant memory portion from Installed Physical Memory to Pagefile (toward the bottom) of MSINFO32.EXE ?

     

    Mine looks like this:

    OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
    Version 10.0.15063 Build 15063
    ...
    Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
    Total Physical Memory 7.75 GB
    Available Physical Memory 5.06 GB
    Total Virtual Memory 11.2 GB
    Available Virtual Memory 8.47 GB
    Page File Space 3.42 GB
    ...

     

    If was having memory issues I would probably cut the pagefile space back to about 1.25GB. Note: I have disabled hibernation so there is no hiberfil.sys. Task Manger shows 2.7GB in use, 5.0 GB available. Resource Monitor will show how the 2.75GB is being used, on the bottom line mine shows 4055MB in "standby" and 1190MB "free". All vary as I add and remove programs.

     

    From MS, "Standby memory are Pages of physical ram not actively being used. These are still left in physical ram but will be repurposed first by the memory manager (either returned to the active list or zeroed out and reused) if something needs physical ram for active pages."

     

    As to sticks/slots that is what is reported to MS, not necessarily what is.

  • JBSINGMED
    JBSINGMED Member Posts: 4 New User

    Capture it.PNG

     

     

    The computer pagefile is capped at 2G by the OS, meaning the System is registering 4GB physical ram.
    I should not be struggling with memory issues, the only reason I am is because no matter what, the available ram is always less than 4GB. 4GB should NOT be in standby. The fact that my computer says 8GB and has access to only 4GB is deceitful especially when I payed money for these laptops. I expect to get what I have payed for.

    Trust me when I tell you I understand the complete inner workings of a system. How Acer managed to use a MICRON 4G single channel stick, and magically get it to dual channel with Embedded memory on board, which I have looked for and I CANNOT isolate on the physical board where ANY onboard Memory Chips, flash modules are located.

    I feel like i just purchased a laptop that is ghosting 4GB of ram to look good, at least until I can get an answer which can prove that it is in the computer and usable.

    EDIT:
    Also for more information, the laptop performance significantly degrades to the point which it is UNUSABLE once i use up the little ram that I have available. The 4GB standby is never swapped, never reallocated, it is STATIC. 
    I can find 0 Information about the board used. An Acer Megatron_SK (u3ei)

    This is not on just 1 laptop, It is all 4 that I purchased totaling around $2,500.00 USD

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    What does Resource Monitor show if you open enough programs to use over 4 GB o memory ?

    resmonmem.jpg

  • JBSINGMED
    JBSINGMED Member Posts: 4 New User

    captured memory.PNG

    Despite what I do, the 4GB of "ram" is untouchable by me or my OS. Safe mode its unavaliable. Computer will not boot with the ONE ram stick removed. 

     

     By the way, thank you Padgett for your interest and taking your time to respond.

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder
    Answer ✓

    It is the "cached" that has me curious. Back in the last century there were highly reliable Tandem computers with an OS called Non-Stop that used mirrored memory (kind of like a RAID disk array). It could be repaced on the fly.

     

    What does RamMap (Microsoft tool) show, both Use Counts and Physical Ranges, possibly that will have a clue.

  • JBSINGMED
    JBSINGMED Member Posts: 4 New User

    Rammap would have given me a clue, I did not think about it. I have returned the Laptops from the vendor which they were purchased. Sadly these laptops did not make it into the office for use due to this issue. 

     

    I plan on purchasing the same ones but from the amazon marketplace. I will inform you when they come in if the issue is still the same even on the ones from a different vendor.

     

    Thanks for your help so far, if interested, I receive the new laptops on the 28th. 

     

    By the way Padgett, I work in a pure computer environment, I breathe it and yet I had never heard of "Non-stop". it was an extremely interesting read and I thank you for that.

  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    Thank you for the compliment. Hard to believe but have been playing with computers mostly on the bleeding edge for 60 years now (Tic-tac-toe in 1957). Suspect an autobiography would go under "fiction" but it is nice not to have to periodically save the world any more.

  • IronFly
    IronFly ACE Posts: 18,413 Trailblazer

    can be your case?

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4c3vqe/is_it_normal_to_have_over_half_of_my_ram_cached/

    I'm not an Acer employee.
  • padgett
    padgett ACE Posts: 4,532 Pathfinder

    That "superfetch" could make sense, back when I was designing microcode developed something similar in that the pipe was always looking eight instructions ahead. If a branch occured then four instructions in each direction. In a quad-redundant digital flight control with a 2 MHz Bit Slice (how AMD got started) processor, saving microseconds was important.

     

    That was when a 32kb processor was big (MSB of an instruction was "indirect") so had a 16k "main" and 16k "overlay" section. Was also a time when rotating memory was slow so words (16 bits) were not adjacent but 120 degrees around the disk so that by the time you were ready for the next word  it was about to come up. This was a time when a 10MB HDD was U$3,000.00. 

     

    You don't know how easy you have it. Modern systems have so much RAM that the OS can prefetch whole progams that are used often & suspect that is what the cache is for.

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