Memory Hole & type E0 Processor

[Reece]

Hi, I have an Asus mobo with AMD Athlon 64 3700+ procerror, in the bios there is setting to enable Memory Hole for type E0 processors, does anyone know if this processor is, and what does it do anyway.:-?
Can someone shed some light on this?:yep:
Thanks.

[danlisa]

Hi Reece, IIRC this setting in the BIOS corrects a problem with RAM allocation.

For example, If you have a MOBO which supports 4GB RAM but you are only getting 2-3GB RAM, enabling this 'Memory Hole' setting will correct that and restore/activate your full 4GB RAM. As to whether you need worry about it, I'm not sure.

Have you tried Google?

[Reece]

Thanks Dan, yes I searched Google but although I find many topics on this not one actually mentions if an AMD Athlon 64 is a type E0 Processor, I think I will take a note of memory using tweak XP, enable the option in bios then check tweak XP again, I couldn't find any info (using Google) concerning the size of ram required for this setting to take effect.:D

[danlisa]

Reece, how much RAM do you have installed in your system? As far as I know this is only a fix if you are (for example) running 4x1GB sticks of RAM and only showing 3GB on your system. It will not magically improve your system performance if you are at anything different.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.:D

[geetrue]

I heard a rumor that Vista 32bit OS will only see 3GB of ram ... that you have to have Vista 64bit OS to see up to 8GB ...

I'm running Vista 32bit with 2GB of DDR2 533mhz and it sure is sweet ...

[tycho102]

32 bit is hard-limited to 4GB. I think 32bit windows takes some kind of hack to recognize the full 4GB. There's a couple of memory holes.

One is between 15-16MB and that's for memory paging by the processor/BIOS. I'm not sure about the specifics. I think this one is present on every x86 computer.

There's another hole that is introduced when you've got 4GB in your system, and that's up toward 3.8GB. I'm not sure why that hole is present, either.