I am running Ubuntu 18.04 64 and the xfce4 desktop on an AMD (AMD A8-3870 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics)
lshw -c cpu reports the following :
description: CPU
product: AMD A8-3870 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
physical id: 30
bus info: cpu@0
version: AMD A8-3870 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
slot: P0
size: 1099MHz
capacity: 3GHz
width: 64 bits
clock: 100MHz
I have 2x2Gb DIMMS installed, and sudo inxi -m reports the following :
Memory: Used/Total: 909.7/1479.0MB
Array-1 capacity: 128 GB (check) devices: 2 EC: None
Device-1: A1_DIMM1 size: 2 GB speed: 667 MT/s type: DDR3
Device-2: A1_DIMM2 size: 2 GB speed: 667 MT/s type: DDR3
However, after numerous freezes I investigated a bit and found what appears to be only a little over 2Gb of ram??? free -m for example shows tis :
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 1479 859 105 49 514 421
Swap: 3814 45 3769
This shows the AMD graphics using the shared memory. The system monitor confirms this. I increases the swap size myself from 2GB to 4GB.
I have spent a few hours searching the web, swapping ram chips around (I have a a spare 2GB), upgraded the BIOS, but am left pulling what's left of my hair out.
Any ideas of what going wrong? I realise it's and old PC, but other than this problem it's pretty nifty for what it is (My main PC is an i7).
It is 64 bit OS on 64 bit hardware, so what few answers there are about 32 bit does not do it.
Many thanks.
UPDATE : A clue from journalctl. If it is indeed the graphics card it's no good to me a graphics card taking in all over 2Gb of a 4Gb system. Investigating ...
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: ATOM BIOS: General
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: radeon 0000:00:01.0: VRAM: 512M 0x0000000000000000 - 0x000000001FFFFFFF (512M used)
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: radeon 0000:00:01.0: GTT: 1024M 0x0000000020000000 - 0x000000005FFFFFFF
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: [drm] Detected VRAM RAM=512M, BAR=256M
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: [drm] RAM width 32bits DDR
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: [TTM] Zone kernel: Available graphics memory: 757258 kiB
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: [TTM] Initializing pool allocator
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: [TTM] Initializing DMA pool allocator
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: [drm] radeon: 512M of VRAM memory ready
Mar 03 15:40:15 gavin-workshop kernel: [drm] radeon: 1024M of GTT memory ready.
