i386 port has access to 32-bit (4 GB) address space but only allows you to use up to 3 GB of RAM at most, the last 1 GB of address space is used for addressing devices, and as others are saying here, video card shared mem also eats up space <4 GB
openbsd didn't bother with PAE on i386, it's too complicated and not worth it because amd64 exists the solution is to move to the amd64 port which has a 64-bit virtual address space (17179869184 GB) which is what you'll need to run google chrome soon anyways. Dave Anderson [d...@daveanderson.com] wrote: > I've been looking at a bunch of notebook dmesgs (i386, single processor) > recently and have noticed that the value reported for 'real mem' is > almost always much lower than the amount of memory actually installed. > A typical example is > > OpenBSD 5.0 (GENERIC) #39: Mon Aug 8 14:53:43 MDT 2011 > dera...@i386.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC > > real mem = 2900148224 (2765MB) > > spdmem0 at iic0 addr 0x50: 4GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-10600 SO-DIMM > spdmem1 at iic0 addr 0x52: 2GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-10600 SO-DIMM > > I understand that i386 cannot see more than 4GB due to architecture > restrictions, but even allowing for that well over a gigabyte has > vanished here. > > A quick look at the code that generates this number shows that it's > skipping various areas reserved by the BIOS, etc., but the total amount > being skipped seems absurd. > > Is there really supposed to be this much reserved space, or is something > wrong? > > Thanks, > > Dave > > -- > Dave Anderson > <d...@daveanderson.com> -- the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
