Vista - DirectX 10 Question

I've already seen this brought up in other threads but I never felt it was
answered fully.

DxDiag is reporting only 2GB of system RAM when I'm running 4GB. Also, it is
only reporting 512MB of VRAM (+ the shared RAM) when I'm running Dual 1GB
Nvidia 9800gx2 in SLI. I'm using Vista Ultimate 32-bit SP1. All versions of
everything are up-to-date as far as I can tell (windows, Directx, drivers,
etc...etc...).

Vista itself reports system RAM at 4GB and VRAM at 512MB (+ shared). Is this
supposed to do this?

=?Utf-8?B?UmlkZ2U=?= <Ridge@xxxxxx> wrote in
news:9E468AD2-02A1-4FA0-ABBB-E90CA50866FA@xxxxxx:
You really want to move over to Vista64 with that much memory and hardware
like the 9800gx2. All hardware has to have address space and 32bit OS can
only address 4GB total so it deducts what your hardware needs from the
memory address space and you only end up with a portion of the 4GB. Video
card needs 1GB alone so that makes 3GB usable buyt then you have other
hardware that needs adress space too so you have less than 3GB of ssytem
ram usable. Vista64 will fix that for you. I use Vista64 and have had only
a few old apps and games that won't run on it.