I have a Lenovo Thinkcentre M78 Tower Desktop. In the BIOS it says I have 8192 MB of Installed Memory. However, when I run free -m
in Xubuntu 14.04 it says I only have 7111 MB of memory. It seems the BIOS is reserving about 1 GB of my RAM.
To try to remedy this issue, in the BIOS I went into Video Setup and changed the UMA Frame Buffer size from Auto to the minimum value of 32M (image below). This then bricked my BIOS which I was able to reset and fix. I thought this was the setting for memory size for the integrated graphics card that I do not use. I use a discreet card which is set as the main card PEG
(PCI Express Graphics) in BIOS.
Could I possibly change the UMA Frame Buffer size to a different number that does not brick my BIOS? If at all possible, I'd like to avoid bricking my BIOS, no fun to do that. By the way, I also have Linux Mint 17 and it also shows the same amount of RAM availability as Xubuntu 14.04. Any input would be much appreciated.
Update: I ran free -m
from an install disk and with the integrated graphics set as primary in the BIOS. I had the same result of 7111 MB of memory available. So this seems that 1 GB is reserved no matter which card is primary in BIOS or which is being used.