[Q] Where's this 2GB of RAM at?

espionage724 · Nov 22, 2012

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But:
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The OS itself might be using a portion of it that's not visible, however, I always have around 600MB+ in-use, even with bare Stock and AOSP... so I doubt this.

EniGmA1987 · Nov 22, 2012

It probably is the OS and kernel using up a chunk. Android 4.2 is pretty heavy.

Android also caches stuff in RAM that isnt even open, even right at boot. This is to help open those apps faster, but if something else needs that cached memory space then Android automatically drops the app in cache and uses it for whatever is needed.
Remember, unused RAM is wasted RAM. Looks to me like you have 600MB of waste

mi7chy · Nov 22, 2012

Part of the 2GB DRAM is probably also shared with video memory and since the resolution is so high it's a big chunk.

faithjano · Dec 12, 2012

same problem but not with nexus 4

Hi guys,
I have the same problem with my nexus 10, about 500-600 MB RAM lost..
The strange thing is that in my nexus 4 it recognize alla 2 GB RAM.
In my nexus 10 I have 2 users, do you think that can ne the cause?

Thanks

espionage724 · Dec 12, 2012

faithjano said:
Hi guys,
I have the same problem with my nexus 10, about 500-600 MB RAM lost..
The strange thing is that in my nexus 4 it recognize alla 2 GB RAM.
In my nexus 10 I have 2 users, do you think that can ne the cause?

Thanks

Multiuser doesn't have any effect; I've had about 1.6GB memory available on all custom ROM's and Kernels I've tried. The fact that the Nexus 4 displays all 2GB usable though does still raise the question as to why about 400MB is missing on the Nexus 10.

mi7chy said:
Part of the 2GB DRAM is probably also shared with video memory and since the resolution is so high it's a big chunk.

This might be a possibility; but I think at this point the Kernel source might be a good place to start digging for proof of whether this is happening or not.

EniGmA1987 · Dec 12, 2012

Some GPUs have dedicated memory and it does not share from the system RAM, our GPU shares and thus it takes a chunk of what we have available.

NeoMagus · Dec 13, 2012

If it makes you feel any better on my GSIII with CM10 its a 2GB device says 1630MB is available. Sounds normal with the N10 mine is the same

skally · Dec 13, 2012

The ram measurement on Android has never shown as 100% empty (I think my Nexus One had 276MB free). Same as a Desktop/Laptop, it would only be 100% unused if there were no Kernel or libraries loaded.

bioorganic · Dec 17, 2012

I'm by no means an expert on this, but I dug into android memory management quite a bit when trying to optimize Shadowgun Deadzone performance. I don't think any of the apps measure memory used by native code. There's an adb command that will show you native memory use for an app, but I never dug that far into it. Again, I'm not a developer, but I assume your missing memory is being used by used by the parts android running native code. What's not clear to me is how android handles how much native memory an app can use. I got over my gaming fixation, but I'm still curious about this. If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd love to hear it.

440hsp · Dec 20, 2012

Mine says 1gb used and 613mb free

Sent from my Nexus 10 using xda premium

penguintamer · Feb 4, 2013

bioorganic said:
I'm by no means an expert on this, but I dug into android memory management quite a bit when trying to optimize Shadowgun Deadzone performance. I don't think any of the apps measure memory used by native code. There's an adb command that will show you native memory use for an app, but I never dug that far into it. Again, I'm not a developer, but I assume your missing memory is being used by used by the parts android running native code. What's not clear to me is how android handles how much native memory an app can use. I got over my gaming fixation, but I'm still curious about this. If anyone can shed some light on this, I'd love to hear it.

I've checked /proc/meminfo and it looks like even the kernel doesn't see the full 2GB (assuming it is really there). MemTotal is 1,686,380 kB. Even if they were using 2GB==2,000,000,000 B, it's still missing over 150MB. I'd really like to know what is going on, but even Google support is completely clueless.

I'll probably just return it for something that lets me use the amount of RAM advertised.

androme · Feb 4, 2013

May be video ram is shared with main memory ?

mieszk3 · Feb 4, 2013

About 160MB is taken by Android OS (kernel + necessary libraries). It's reserved only for the OS, so it's unavailable for the user. It's common for all Android devices I've had.
For example my i9001 (SGS+) has also missing ~160MB of RAM (should have 512MB, but has only ~350MB available for apps.

penguintamer · Feb 4, 2013

If the video memory is shared at the hardware level, the number would make sense. What irks me is that I don't see that mentioned anywhere even on 'techie' blogs/reviews and even Google support doesn't know this about their device.
From what I understand, unless the kernel was modified to report less memory than is really available, meminfo should report the full amount accurately.

JarGnex · Feb 19, 2013

I don't even get 1.6 GB of ram

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk 2

y2whisper · Feb 19, 2013

thats seems to be a normal thing for 4.2.2

dibblebill · Feb 19, 2013

As an owner of a previous tablet, my Acer Iconia a500 reported (in 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2) that it only had 725MB of RAM (it shipped with 1GB). My guess is that the missing chunk is graphics memory. I also show 1.6GB of RAM in my Nexus 10.

espionage724 · Feb 19, 2013

prior to 4.2.2, the GPU had 400-some MB reserved. At 4.2.2, there is almost an extra 400MB (386MB I think to be exact) reserved for the GPU, so 2GB - 800MB = 1.2GB

The extra GPU memory is to prevent userspace fragmentation if I read right.

dibblebill · Feb 19, 2013

Awesome. Thanks for the explanation. I just noticed that after the CyanogenMod 4.2.2 patch, mine dropped as well. Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich must've reserved around 256MB of memory.

Sent from my Nexus 10 using XDA Premium HD app

IRX120 · Feb 20, 2013

Odd, seeing as how the N7 has 975/1024 available
And my nexus 4 has 1.8 of the 2gb available.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app

[Q] Where's this 2GB of RAM at?

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