# showing 7.7 vs 8GB of memory?

## paulb787

why is gnome system monitor only showing 7.7 vs 8GB of memory? 

cat /proc/mtrr

 *Quote:*   

> reg00: base=0x000000000 (    0MB), size= 8192MB, count=1: write-back
> 
> reg01: base=0x200000000 ( 8192MB), size= 1024MB, count=1: write-back
> 
> reg02: base=0x0bb800000 ( 3000MB), size=    8MB, count=1: uncachable
> ...

 

Thank U

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## DaggyStyle

because it is better for business to write 8G (in decimal) instead of 7.7G in size.

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## s_bernstein

We are talking about RAM here, and that is, as far as I know, always calculated in base2 units. Only the storage supplies need to fool their customers.

Your RAM is showing as 7.7G instead of 8G because there are some parts of your RAM allocated by other hardware (graphics, network, storage) and is therefore unavailable as RAM. You can argue, that they should display 8G of RAM with 300M reserved / inaccessable / unavailable or whateever, but they don't. If I remember correctly this has historical / technical reason.

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## Ant P.

The kernel is using 300MB of non-freeable RAM. It'll say the same in top, free, htop, etc.

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