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August 4th, 2012 17:00

3.2GB (out of 4GB) of RAM usable by system.

Hello,

I just bought Dell XPS 13, installed 64bit version of Ubuntu and noticed the strange thing. System sees only 3.2GB of RAM for my application. I have the newest BIOS (A06) which is reporting the proper value (4096MB). I have installed the modified kernel from this PPA:

https://launchpad.net/~kamalmostafa/+archive/dellxps

Everything is running flawlessly, the only one problem I have is too low amount of RAM.

I have already posted question on askubuntu.com:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/171881/only-3-2gb-ram-out-of-4gb-usable-on-64bit-installation-dell-xps-13

Also tried to get some support from #ubuntu and #linux on freenode, didn't get solution yet.

Same problem occurs on stock ubuntu kernel and 32bit version with PAE.

I'm not really sure if this is a proper place to ask for help, but it might be the last one too look for it. Also maybe someone from project sputnik team will be interested.

3 Posts

August 7th, 2012 02:00

Today I found that problem is related to bios. I downgraded it to version A03 and I can see 3.8GB of RAM which is acceptable because according to kernel logs, graphic card is reserving 256MB.

I will try different BIOS versions, also I will install 64bit version of Windows 7 to see if this problem will also occur in another OS.

7 Technologist

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538 Posts

August 8th, 2012 19:00

PMDZ,  thanks for reporting this and keeping us updated

Barton,  project lead

3 Posts

September 8th, 2012 13:00

Currently using A07, BIOS shows 4GB of system memory, however I only have 3.2GB usable.

gist.github.com/1176eb48d2e78a39bf76

3 Posts

September 9th, 2012 01:00

My battery life seems to be a bit better than 3.5 hours, will have to clock it tomorrow. I wonder if "firmware-addon-dell" works, will be looking into it.

September 9th, 2012 01:00

A04 Bios:

$ free -m
            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3713        991       2722          0         62        535
-/+ buffers/cache:        393       3319
Swap:         3906          0       3906


3 Posts

September 9th, 2012 01:00

Will be interesting to see what I lose by using A04 over A06/7.

@iandouglas736 Any issues?

September 9th, 2012 01:00

No idea what A06/A07 should provide in terms of services or changes. I haven't had any hardware issues, though m battery life is nowhere near 8 hours. I'm lucky to get 3.5 hours on my XPS13.

2 Posts

May 16th, 2013 13:00

Tried to use the A03, but i got issues with suspend with that version. After waking up the system wont put the cpu to sleep and battery gets drained very VERY fast. A08 reports 3,2 GB available at Linux and Windows. A fix would be very nice, 3,2 GB is just not enough

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