Dell XPS 13 System Memory Issues (Probably caused by Intel HD3000)

[Lorenzo Villani]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 10:14 PM, Dale Dellutri <daledellutri at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 9:46 AM, Lorenzo Villani <lorenzo at villani.me> wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I recently bought a Dell XPS 13 and noticed that the amount of memory
>> visible to the system is lower than I expected. This machine ships with
>> a 4Gb module even though the system "sees" only 3,2Gb.
>
> I assume that the BIOS will tell you how much is taken by the Intel HD 3000,
> not just how much total memory.
>
> Another possibility:
>   $ lspci -vv
> should also tell you how much the VGA controller is using.

As far as I understand it, the graphic chip "steals" around 260Mb of
RAM. I think I'll try booting Windows just to see if it changes
things. All Linux distributions I tried consistently report the same
amount of total system memory.

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation
Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if
00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 052e
	Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr-
Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort-
<TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 48
	Region 0: Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
	Region 2: Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	Region 4: I/O ports at 2000 [size=64]
	Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
	Capabilities: [90] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
		Address: fee0300c  Data: 4199
	Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
		Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
		Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
	Capabilities: [a4] PCI Advanced Features
		AFCap: TP+ FLR+
		AFCtrl: FLR-
		AFStatus: TP-
	Kernel driver in use: i915
	Kernel modules: i915

-- 
L.