Late 2006 Imac and memory

[blow45]

One of my late 2006 imacs has 3gb of memory as appearing in the system profiler.

How can I tell if there are actually 4gbs installed and the os is only addressing 3 of them without opening it up? From activity monitor it shows only 3gbs of memory, so I guess it is indeed just 3 of them there.

From what I read if you put in 4gbs of ram system profiler might only show up 3 but the system actually DOES address all 4 of them, can someone verify this?

Thanks.

 

[Intell]

Activity Monitor will show 4GB if it is installed, but the system will only be able to use 3.3GB of it. Another way you can check is looking in System Profiler's memory section. It will tell you which slot has the 1GB stick and which has the 2GB stick.

 

[blow45]

thanks intell. So basically my difference between 4gb and 3gb of installed ram is .3gbs?

Any good testing software for a stress test to find out current latencies and the like?

 

[Intell]

Besides the extra 0.3GB, the ram will operate in dual channel mode as opposed to single channel mode. While not much of a gain, it is still a gain. I don't know of any ram stress/benchmark tools.