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710mb ram?

Sepero

Sepero

Linux Guru
My LG Motion reports 710MB ram, and I believe my last one did too.

The accidentally over-clocked CPU at 1.5Ghz is ok, but getting 3/4 ram is not cool. :mad:
 
Pretty sure the phone is 1.5 straight from metro its not overclocked and also your not gonna have all of the ram because some is used by the os and if more is needed it will shut down apps as needed
 
@OverByter
Ah yes, I'm familiar with Intel using real ram for it's integrated gpu's, so the same thing might be happening here. When checking the total internal ram it reports 710MB. Do you how know we can tell that the gpu is using the other 290MB, and we aren't getting scammed?
 
Sepero said:
@OverByter
Ah yes, I'm familiar with Intel using real ram for it's integrated gpu's, so the same thing might be happening here. When checking the total internal ram it reports 710MB. Do you how know we can tell that the gpu is using the other 290MB, and we aren't getting scammed?
Click to expand...

Not that I'm aware of but there's no such thing as a 710 Gb nand so I'm pretty sure you're safe, plus it would be all over the intetwebs within an hour if a manufacturer ever tried it. ;)
 
The other 390 is reserved for system use. How is 710 ram bad anyways? Is your system slow? There are people that run that laggy huawei metro had and you're worrying about not having 390 more ram.
Just saying that out there ;)
EDIT: meant 290 mb lol
 
The OS reserves a large amount of the RAM so that it is able to perform its regular operations. The user usually has around 250MB of available RAM, sometimes less.
 
Just remember that until FroYo most phones had 256 Mb total for both the system and the user. :banghead:
 
Let us not propagate misinformation here. Just to be clear, the 290MB is Not being used by the OS. Anyone that thinks this clearly doesn't understand what's going on with the device.

Code: 
$ free
             total         used         free       shared      buffers
Mem:        727040       714052        12988            0        35584
-/+ buffers:             678468        48572
Swap:            0            0            0
727040KB ram total

The GPU consuming the other ~290MB ram is the most probable cause
 
Ubercharrge said:
How is 710 ram bad anyways?
Click to expand...
How is being served 3/4 of a hamburger bad if you pay for a whole hamburger? ;)

I understand what you guys are saying about 710MB being a good and large amount of ram. I agree that it is above average, even at 710MB.

My main point here is I just want to make sure I've gotten everything the product was advertised as. I think it's good to keep manufacturers honest about what they sell.
 
Yes, you've gotten what you've paid for. No amount of memory advertised is actually what is available to the user.

Your 16gb flash drive or sd cards don't actually have 16gb available to you.

Part of this is due to how they are calculated, and another is due to the device saving some of it for itself
 
Rxpert83 said:
Part of this is due to how they are calculated, and another is due to the device saving some of it for itself
Click to expand...
I got that often when upgrading hard drives for people. Some don't realize that the space advertised on a drive is raw capacity, and that once partitioned and formatted, not all space is available to the user; the partition map on the drive platters takes physical space, and thus decreases capacity.

Not sure how that works out with solid state memory though, I'd count on the RAM discrepancy being on account of memory allocated to the GPU. It's the same thing for most laptops and PC's with an on-board GPU.
 
TheAmazingDave said:
I got that often when upgrading hard drives for people. Some don't realize that the space advertised on a drive is raw capacity, and that once partitioned and formatted, not all space is available to the user; the partition map on the drive platters takes physical space, and thus decreases capacity.

Not sure how that works out with solid state memory though, I'd count on the RAM discrepancy being on account of memory allocated to the GPU. It's the same thing for most laptops and PC's with an on-board GPU.
Click to expand...

Also drives "lose" capacity because it's measured using a decimal gig equaling 1000 kb instead of the binary gig that the computer uses and reports which is actually 1024 kb.
 
TheAmazingDave said:
I'd count on the RAM discrepancy being on account of memory allocated to the GPU. It's the same thing for most laptops and PC's with an on-board GPU.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I think it's either this, or we are being scammed. I lean in favor of the memory being used by the gpu.

If we do a little simple math we can see that the byte conversion hypothesis doesn't hold:
1000000000 bytes = 976562.5 KB

(Not 747040KB)

So I guess this boils down to somehow proving that the extra 229522.5 KB exists (and is possibly being used by the gpu?)
 
That only applies to storage devices using decimal instead of binary, all memory devices capacities are listed using binary. As previously posted memory doesn't come in that capacity, it's always a binary multiple so you aren't being scammed.
I have had my phone apart and it has a Samsung 1Gb LPDDR2 chip on board but I "only" have 768 Mb available. Again it's impossible to manufacture memory devices in this this capacity because they must always be a binary multiple.
 
You're saying because it can only come in a binary multiple then it has to be in this type of range, yes?
2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024

So how many bytes is 1 gig of memory?
If you have a source, then I'm very interested to read it.
 
OverByter said:
1 gig =1073741824 bytes, see here : Gigabyte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Click to expand...
Ok, now maybe we are getting somewhere. LG says the Motion comes with 1 gig of Ram, which you say is 1073741824 bytes

1073741824 bytes = 1048576 kilobytes
The LG Motion Ram has 727040 kilobytes
1048576 - 727040 = 321536


If the LG Motion comes with 1 gig of Ram, where did the other 321536 kilobytes go to??? (It can't be consumed by the OS, because the OS doesn't even have access to it. It doesn't even show as existing.)
 
Sepero said:
Ok, now maybe we are getting somewhere. LG says the Motion comes with 1 gig of Ram, which you say is 1073741824 bytes

1073741824 bytes = 1048576 kilobytes
The LG Motion Ram has 727040 kilobytes
1048576 - 727040 = 321536


If the LG Motion comes with 1 gig of Ram, where did the other 321536 kilobytes go to???
Click to expand...

Its being allocated to the various parts the system needs to run.

There's really no conspiracy here.

If you want to pursue this further, I'd suggest you contact LG
 
Sepero said:
Ok, now maybe we are getting somewhere. LG says the Motion comes with 1 gig of Ram, which you say is 1073741824 bytes

1073741824 bytes = 1048576 kilobytes
The LG Motion Ram has 727040 kilobytes
1048576 - 727040 = 321536


If the LG Motion comes with 1 gig of Ram, where did the other 321536 kilobytes go to??? (It can't be consumed by the OS, because the OS doesn't even have access to it. It doesn't even show as existing.)
Click to expand...

As I've posted on a few occasions, I have 768 available out of a gig Samsung LPDDR2 chip, I've seen it with my own 2 eyes, this isn't really rocket science. In no way are you or anyone else being screwed. Doing math calculations until the end of time isn't going to change the chip that I physically put my finger on. :rolleyes:
Have a little faith and chalk it up to an unexplained mystery of the cosmos.
 
I've physically put my finger on a labeled 256GB USB drive before (it ended up being less than 100GB, and it was *dramatic pause* a scam) :rolleyes: So who's finger has more magical truth revealing powers???

There seems to be a bit of denial going on in this thread. Apparently I'm like a conspiracy theorist for having an open mind, asking questions, and not accepting conjectures. And also I'm not allowed to do math because it leaves an unaccounted remainder of ram according to numbers that I didn't even provide! Funny stuff, though you guys give me a laugh sometimes... :D :D :D




The command "free" was executed to the Linux kernel itself, and that's how we can know the OS doesn't have access to more than 727040 KB Ram. You can verify that yourself from within any terminal emulator.

As I've said, I would be willing to agree that it's highly probable the rest of the ram is going to the GPU. Giving a GPU ~300KB Ram is not unreasonable. Though, if we assume it's not a scam, we haven't even proven that the GPU is actually using the Ram. It may be that there is a mistake in the system which causes it to inaccurately recognize all Ram. (We all know this phone suffers from another popular mistake *1.5Ghz*). So truthfully I don't really think it is a scam, but at the same time, I just think it would be foolish to take any possibilities off the table without some real proof.

Now I'm sure some of you're not too happy with me, but I mean no hard feelings guys. I really just meant to have an honest inquiry on this topic, and I feel like I've been trying to stay as objective as possible. And Rxpert83, I do agree with you about this- To know for sure, someone may have to contact LG (or perhaps qualcomm). :o
 
Sepero said:
I've physically put my finger on a labeled 256GB USB drive before (it ended up being less than 100GB, and it was *dramatic pause* a scam) :rolleyes: So who's finger has more magical truth revealing powers???

There seems to be a bit of denial going on in this thread. Apparently I'm like a conspiracy theorist for having an open mind, asking questions, and not accepting conjectures. And also I'm not allowed to do math because it leaves an unaccounted remainder of ram according to numbers that I didn't even provide! Funny stuff, though you guys give me laugh sometimes... :D :D :D




The command "free" was executed to the Linux kernel itself, and that's how we can know the OS doesn't have access to more than 727040 KB Ram. You can verify that yourself from within any terminal emulator.

As I've said, I would be willing to agree that it's highly probable the rest of the ram is going to the GPU. Giving a GPU ~300KB Ram is not unreasonable. Though, if we assume it's not a scam, we haven't even proven that the GPU is actually using the Ram. It may be that there is a mistake in the system which causes it to inaccurately recognize all Ram. (We all know this phone suffers from another popular mistake *1.5Ghz*). So truthfully I don't really think it is a scam, but at the same time, I just think it would be foolish to take any possibilities off the table without some real proof.

Now I'm sure some of you're not too happy with me, but I mean no hard feelings guys. I really just meant to have an honest inquiry on this topic, and I feel like I've been trying to stay as objective as possible. And Rxpert83, I do agree with you about this- To know for sure, someone may have to contact LG (or perhaps qualcomm). :o
Click to expand...

I'm talking about actually recognizing the part number on the RAM chip, fake nand drives just have an altered partition table, if you open it and research the part number you would see that it's being inaccurately reported to the OS, also running the "free" command in terminal doesn't mean that part of the "missing" ram hasn't already been used by the system during boot, it shows what's currently available after the system finished loading.
 
OverByter said:
also running the "free" command in terminal doesn't mean that part of the "missing" ram hasn't already been used by the system during boot, it shows what's currently available after the system finished loading.
Click to expand...
I Never said the missing ram wasn't being using by the "system". I repeatedly said the ram wasn't being used by the "OS". I just want to be clear about that so I'm not accidentally being misrepresented.

I agree that it's entirely possible that the missing ram is being used by the "system", and that was largely the whole point... Figuring out where in the system it supposedly went.

Also, you're at least partially correct on the command "free", depending on what part you are describing.

The "total" signifier of the "free" command reports the amount of Ram available to the Kernel and All processes IDs that are run by the Kernel. This means the "missing" Ram is being reserved Prior to the initialization of the Kernel.

In short, the Kernel+OS+Apps are limited to existing within a Maximum of 727040KB ram (the total ram). The "missing" extra ram is not directly accessible by the Kernel or OS, and it has yet to be identified as being used by any component.

I definitely don't understand everything on the hardware side, but programming on Linux for over a decade has taught me a thing or two about software.

Everyone's input on this topic is appreciated. We've eliminated a few possibilities, and revealed a few others. Hopefully I can discover what the real answer is with continued independent research.

Cheers
 
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