Thats what I call Mathememtics: 2+2=2.5



If you know me, you know that my Lenovo T400 ThinkPad is quite slow. I have a slow disk and my 2GB main memory were not enough, so today I went to the shop to buy a whopping extra 2GB.

Directly in the shop I expectingly used my sweaty joyful hands to put the new thinking space into the machine and voila: Task manager reported:
2520 MB Physical memory
WTF? I had something like 1900 MB before, adding 2GB only results in 600MB more space?

Of course of course, you will now say: But Leo, you forgot that Windows 7 32bit can only address 3.5GB ram - silly you. But behold: thats still a GB short of my 2.5 GB.

I had no choice but to look for that missing GB. Note of sillyness: a 2GB RAM module costs 21€. As my windows lost 1GB I thought I may just go for the 1GB module to save a whopping 2€! - yes, the 1GB module was sold for 19€. So I rather decided to search for the missing GB.

So where is it?

Apparently, Lenovos have 2 graphics cards and once you upgrade, they decide to grab the extra mem for personal satisfaction.

• http://www.beezmo.com/ThinkPadT400Dir/TPT400WindowsDir/T400VistaUltimate.htm
• http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/T400-Vista-only-2-5G-of-RAM-showing/m-p/55219#M598

User, I am your almighty graphics card. I appreciate your ridiculous sacrifice of 1GB ram to appease me, but you must give me your firstborn virgin daughter as next sacrifice.
This would be no problem would not be the other graphics card:
User, I am your almighty onboard graphics card. I take another 500mb of your RAM as sacrifice and take your second born virgin daughter. And bring some beer when you come home.
Ok, thats enough. Thanks to the great advice found on the internets I was finally able to get to 3066MB physical RAM on my Lenovo T400.

Boot, go to bios using the blue ThinkVantage button. I turned off switchable graphics and also switchable graphics detection and set the mode to "discrete graphics". This allegedly costs more battery but I don't have to reboot and tweak the BIOS if I want to play Starcraft II.

Funnily, it won't work after the first boot. I did set it in the BIOS and booted and it had 2554MB physical RAM. Then it installed some graphics drivers - it seems that fumbling in the BIOS activates a graphics mode formerly unknown - and after booting again it suddenly had 3066MB RAM.

The very motivating end of this otherwise very very well invested time (yeah, wtf, the first computer that did NOT have more ram when I put in more ram) is that I ended up with 3066 MB whereas the other folks on the internets only were able to squeeze 3065MB RAM out of their 4GB Lenovos. I feel so proud.

p.s. it seems that now my battery life is halfed. First, the extra RAM of course needs battery, and second the almighty windows cannot switch now between graphics cards to save power and I have the great opportunity to reboot and tweak the BIOS another day to find out how to do it. Time to buy a bigger battery? Well...you can guess yourself what a double-sized battery will do with a Lenovo...2+2.....