Database Users

326MB of RAM?

Just got a Samsung Vibrant.
I noticed the phone says I only have 326MB of total RAM. I thought this phone was suppose to have 512MB of RAM? Is 326MB normal or did I get an odd phone?

No that's right. It's all the kernel will allow us to use. Even with the unofficial froyo roms out, we only get 341mb.
Friends don't let friends flash drunk...

Cool. Thank you for the information.

Ravynmagi said:
Hmm... Seems strange they make Android phones with 512 and 768MB of RAM. Will the official Froyo be able to access more RAM?
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Click to collapse
It's also strange that hard drive manufacturers advertise a "500GB" hard drive when you really only get about 465GB of actual usable space.
Same concept. Froyo may be able to utilize more RAM than Eclair but you'll never get the full "512MB"

jrizk07 said:
It's also strange that hard drive manufacturers advertise a "500GB" hard drive when you really only get about 465GB of actual usable space.
Same concept. Froyo may be able to utilize more RAM than Eclair but you'll never get the full "512MB"
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Click to collapse
I would say it is more like on your PC. You may have 4 GB installed, but when you look at it it will tell you you have only access to 3.5 GB because other hardware is using the memory, like a shared GPU etc.

jrizk07 said:
It's also strange that hard drive manufacturers advertise a "500GB" hard drive when you really only get about 465GB of actual usable space.
Same concept. Froyo may be able to utilize more RAM than Eclair but you'll never get the full "512MB"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm getting tired of people making these retarded f****ng comparisons. Hard Drive capacities go down due to formating. Also, a 1 byte file takes up the smallest allocation unit on the drive, so space is wasted there as well. Better file systems are better about it, but unless you're writing raw data to the hard drive there's no way to avoid formatting it and losing space or writing data to it and losing space due to allocation boundaries. I've never heard of anyone Formatting RAM, have you? If the smallest allocation unit on the HDD is 4KB, then a 1Byte file will really take up 4KB on the drive's FS.
RAM is totally different. If there is 512 RAM there's 512 RAM. The only time you will see less than your amount of RAM on a computer is if the computer is allocatting a certain amount of RAM for use by an integrated graphics card (or something else).
Problem with our phones is that they're set up like the latter.
We don't have 512 RAM. We never have, and we never will. We haev 340'ish and the rest is GPU RAM. You're never going to run general applications on that RAM.

Oh. I had edited my reply because I had assumed I found my answer from this...
developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html
"HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB"
I had assumed that mean the official Froyo when we got it would have 512MB available.
So I guess I misunderstood their meaning there. So the 326MB is pretty much the max my applications will have to work with on this phone?
I guess I'm puzzled because I was in T-Mobile a couple days ago and I was going back and forth between getting this Vibrant and the MyTouch 4G. The MyTouch 4G advertises 768MB of RAM, while the Vibrant advertises 512MB of RAM.
So now I'm back to my original confusion. Why would HTC put 768MB of RAM in the MyTouch 4G if Android can't even use 512MB? *confused*
Ya'll compared it to the Windows XP limitation with only seeing 3.2-ish GB of RAM. But Dell doesn't install 8GB of RAM in Windows XP computers either. I guess I could maybe understand the 512MB phones if some of the memory is going towards video. But the 768MB phone doesn't make sense then.
This is my first Android device, so I'm still trying to figure out these things. Sorry for the dumb questions.

Ravynmagi said:
Oh. I had edited my reply because I had assumed I found my answer from this...
developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.2-highlights.html
"HIGHMEM support for RAM >256MB"
I had assumed that mean the official Froyo when we got it would have 512MB available.
So I guess I misunderstood their meaning there. So the 326MB is pretty much the max my applications will have to work with on this phone?
I guess I'm puzzled because I was in T-Mobile a couple days ago and I was going back and forth between getting this Vibrant and the MyTouch 4G. The MyTouch 4G advertises 768MB of RAM, while the Vibrant advertises 512MB of RAM.
So now I'm back to my original confusion. Why would HTC put 768MB of RAM in the MyTouch 4G if Android can't even use 512MB? *confused*
Ya'll compared it to the Windows XP limitation with only seeing 3.2-ish GB of RAM. But Dell doesn't install 8GB of RAM in Windows XP computers either. I guess I could maybe understand the 512MB phones if some of the memory is going towards video. But the 768MB phone doesn't make sense then.
This is my first Android device, so I'm still trying to figure out these things. Sorry for the dumb questions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all. There are no dumb question. Second. Android uses all of the RAM. But as the phone reserves memory for hardware and other system essential services, you will only be able to use a certain amount of the memory. In this case around 345 out of the 512. The rest is put away so that the OS can run stable etc.
So for the MyTouch 4G it says that there is 768 MB installed, but you won't see all of that. The phone will reserve certain amount for it's hardware and you will never be able to free it unless you know how to change the kernel.
Hope this clears any confusion up.

Ravynmagi said:
Ya'll compared it to the Windows XP limitation with only seeing 3.2-ish GB of RAM. But Dell doesn't install 8GB of RAM in Windows XP computers either. I guess I could maybe understand the 512MB phones if some of the memory is going towards video. But the 768MB phone doesn't make sense then.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for xp, the memory limitation is due to 32bit memory addressing. 32bits can address a theoretical 4gb, however due to also addressing gpu memory and probably some other reasons xp can't address the entire 4gb and so you see 3.xGB.
i can't really speak to android or the vibrant, but i'm guessing (like others have said) we are losing some of our ram in a share with the gpu.

I think most people are missing the issue here.
The phones are advertised as having 512 MB RAM.
When you buy a computer, and it says 512, it comes with 512 (only exception is the one I stated - integrated graphics cards sharing system RAM - but that is usually listed on the Computer Spec sheet).
So, when they get a phone and it says 512 MB RAM, they expect for there to be 512 Application-accessible RAM on the device.
HTC adds more RAM to put the user closer to the advertised specs. Most other manufacturers do not.
So users end up with 326 MB RAM wondering if they got what they paid for.
Which... they really didn't if you use you common sense, but companies will always use technicalities tand semantics o defend their decisions and/or actions.

N8ter said:
I think most people are missing the issue here.
The phones are advertised as having 512 MB RAM.
When you buy a computer, and it says 512, it comes with 512 (only exception is the one I stated - integrated graphics cards sharing system RAM - but that is usually listed on the Computer Spec sheet).
So, when they get a phone and it says 512 MB RAM, they expect for there to be 512 Application-accessible RAM on the device.
HTC adds more RAM to put the user closer to the advertised specs. Most other manufacturers do not.
So users end up with 326 MB RAM wondering if they got what they paid for.
Which... they really didn't if you use you common sense, but companies will always use technicalities tand semantics o defend their decisions and/or actions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely agree with you. In fact some of us in xda have discovered that sgs indeed has less than 512MB of RAM. We are still somehow trying to defend Samsung by say Galaxy TAB has more RAM (when Samsung advertise 512MB only for TAB)!
On a side note - Hard Drive capacity is measured in millions of bytes hence 500,000millionbytes
will be around 465GB only (unformated)!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

I doubt ~170 mb is being allocated for the radio and for hardware addressing space. It's my opinion that the phone actually only comes with 384mb ram.

raduque said:
I doubt ~170 mb is being allocated for the radio and for hardware addressing space. It's my opinion that the phone actually only comes with 384mb ram.
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no.
10ch

Prankey said:
I completely agree with you. In fact some of us in xda have discovered that sgs indeed has less than 512MB of RAM. We are still somehow trying to defend Samsung by say Galaxy TAB has more RAM (when Samsung advertise 512MB only for TAB)!
On a side note - Hard Drive capacity is measured in millions of bytes hence 500,000millionbytes
will be around 465GB only (unformated)!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Many do list that but what makes the drives smaller is formatting. The raw size is what it is, but the formatted capacity is much less. You can ser this on sf cards easily. Format it as fat32 then ntfs, and the end (formatted) capacities will be different. Then play with allocation sizes as well ;p
If you have hordes of small files it can really eat inyo the space on ut hard drive, as well, since a file can only be as small as the smallest cluster size in the filesystem.
Even if they made the drive 1024mb x however many gb they say it is, that will be instantly cut fown tje minute you format a fs onto the drive. There is also space the fs reserves for system use, as well. Mft and such.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

anthonys2r said:
no.
10ch
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He's right hardware addrrssimg shouldn't need that much, and graphics in a phone shouldn't need that much either. Maybe so,eone should sue Samsumg for false advertisement and see what they say.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

anthonys2r said:
no.
10ch
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Click to collapse
You can "no." all you want, but unless you have proof to the contrary, I'm going to stick with my OPINION that the phone has 384mb.
There's no way in hell the Radio, hardware addressing space and/or GPU frame buffer use 170-180mb of the ram.

raduque said:
You can "no." all you want, but unless you have proof to the contrary, I'm going to stick with my OPINION that the phone has 384mb.
There's no way in hell the Radio, hardware addressing space and/or GPU frame buffer use 170-180mb of the ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree just checked and vibrant shows similar ram to htc aria, which has 384mb ram stock.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

raduque said:
You can "no." all you want, but unless you have proof to the contrary, I'm going to stick with my OPINION that the phone has 384mb.
There's no way in hell the Radio, hardware addressing space and/or GPU frame buffer use 170-180mb of the ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is a thread in the i9k forum that details the amounts of ram reserved in the kernel source. Just about every feature on the phone has dedicated ram, weather or not it's currently in use. That plus what the kernel shows as available adds up to 512mb. It's stupid, but that's how it is. Poor and lazy software engineering, IMO. Unfortunately, doing the allocation in a sane way and having it work in android properly is very difficult without all of the source, which we will probably never have.
It's not really any better with other manufacturers. They all do it. I think they ought to be required to disclose user available ram amounts, but nobody cares what I think.

N8ter said:
I'm getting tired of people making these retarded f****ng comparisons. Hard Drive capacities go down due to formating. Also, a 1 byte file takes up the smallest allocation unit on the drive, so space is wasted there as well. Better file systems are better about it, but unless you're writing raw data to the hard drive there's no way to avoid formatting it and losing space or writing data to it and losing space due to allocation boundaries. I've never heard of anyone Formatting RAM, have you? If the smallest allocation unit on the HDD is 4KB, then a 1Byte file will really take up 4KB on the drive's FS.
RAM is totally different. If there is 512 RAM there's 512 RAM. The only time you will see less than your amount of RAM on a computer is if the computer is allocatting a certain amount of RAM for use by an integrated graphics card (or something else).
Problem with our phones is that they're set up like the latter.
We don't have 512 RAM. We never have, and we never will. We haev 340'ish and the rest is GPU RAM. You're never going to run general applications on that RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had 326 RAM .After installation of FROYO 2.2,my Galaxy can see only 304 RAm.Why?I expected to get more RAM with FROYO 2.2 Why did this happened?

N8ter said:
He's right hardware addrrssimg shouldn't need that much, and graphics in a phone shouldn't need that much either. Maybe so,eone should sue Samsumg for false advertisement and see what they say.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you should do it. You know, since you know exactly what you're talking about.

[Q] Lenovo TPT HDD and RAM memory lower than in spec

Hi,
I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad tabled with memory specifications of 1GB RAM and 16GB HDD. All nice, until I go in Settings and check at settings/applications/storage use/running and all which show a disappointing values of total memory ~550MB RAM (almost half...) and ~12GB (almost 25% less...).
For HDD, I can not accept that the rest of 4GB are hidden because are used by Android 3.1 or used by file system format. Even so, Lenovo should be honest and declare total memory against available memory even is "eaten" by various reasons.
For RAM, I can not find any explanation why I see only half.
Q1-Can somebody explain me if tablet is faulty or has a kind of manufacturing issue ?
Q2-Can somebody to check if his tablet has the same memory discrepancies versus manufacturer specifications ?
Thanks!

All tablet's have this "cheaty" way of listing specs. But if you buy a laptop and it says 200gb. You can be pretty sure that windows 7 or what ever is installed is taking up space. The same applies to RAM. While the system may come with 4gb ram, the system has "eaten" som of it.
So, I don't really see the complaint here?

siggehandf said:
All tablet's have this "cheaty" way of listing specs. But if you buy a laptop and it says 200gb. You can be pretty sure that windows 7 or what ever is installed is taking up space. The same applies to RAM. While the system may come with 4gb ram, the system has "eaten" som of it.
So, I don't really see the complaint here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
The specs will never match the actual available memory since there is always space allocated to system whether it be ram or hdd
Sent from my GALAXY NEXUS using Tapatalk

sorinutzu said:
For RAM, I can not find any explanation why I see only half.
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Click to collapse
It's likely that the other half is being reserved as video memory.

Hi,
Thanks for reply. I've done a check on other tablets and they show the same lower memory than spec, except Asus 501 I think with ICS 4.
However, I think it should be specified total phisical memory and available memory.

sorinutzu said:
Hi,
Thanks for reply. I've done a check on other tablets and they show the same lower memory than spec, except Asus 501 I think with ICS 4.
However, I think it should be specified total phisical memory and available memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Total available ram will be different and much less than the specs on any Android or mobile device. The system uses memory to load OS and for graphics.
Also the memory space will be less formatted and with all the system apps.
Just like a formatted hard drive or ssd is less than spec.
I do not know why people still complain about these things it is pretty ignorant. Have you ever owned a computer, tablet or cell phone before?
Sent from my HTC Rezound

ASUS TF300 the first Android device to TRULY have 1GB of RAM?

I posted this in another thread but thought it was worthy of its own thread.
I've owned a lot of Android devices with 1GB of RAM - Xoom, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy Note, and the original Transformer. This is the first android device that actually shows 1gb of ram. Every 1gb phone or tablet I've had only lists around 750mb total, and then only about 400 or so free on a fresh boot. The explanation has always been that 1gb is shared ram and that the mixing 250mb or so is for video ram. You can see total and available ram in an app called OSMonitor. Anyway, the tf300 actually shows 1gb total ram, and 750 free on a fresh boot. So that's an extra 250mb of usable ram over other devices.
Thoughts?

The device has more as 1GB RAM (1,2GB maybe)?
Gesendet von meinem Galaxy Nexus mit Tapatalk 2

It's advertised as 1GB of RAM, so either it has more actual RAM (1.2 like you suggest) or it has dedicated video RAM somehow.
It's very possible this is inherent to Tegra3. I do not have any Tegra 3 devices to check. I'm going to ask in the Prime Q&A section.

Obviously either a design flaw or outright false advertisement. You should sue them for giving you more ram than advertised.

goodintentions said:
Obviously either a design flaw or outright false advertisement. You should sue them for giving you more ram than advertised.
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Click to collapse
WTF? I'm not complaining I'm trying to understand it. It's different than every other Android device.

EvoXOhio said:
WTF? I'm not complaining I'm trying to understand it. It's different than every other Android device.
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Click to collapse
Goodintentions is known to be sarcastic you will learn that in time. Most likley it is because tegra 3's gpu has its own dedicated ram so it does not go into the system ram

mrevankyle said:
Goodintentions is known to be sarcastic you will learn that in time. Most likley it is because tegra 3's gpu has its own dedicated ram so it does not go into the system ram
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would explain it. do you have a source link to back that up? not finding anything in a google search.
Thanks.

Everything im finding is that it just has the 1gb of ram, but possibly the way it handles it is different and may expand or shrink that video ram depending on what it needs.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-3-processor.html
just general info

also is DDR3

jblah said:
also is DDR3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah DDR3 means it's faster and has more bandwidth, but that wouldn't affect whether the system has dedicated or shared video RAM.

Is it possible that it's just more efficient in the usage of it's 1GB of ram than the previous products? I can't find any mention anywhere of Tegra 3 specifically doing anything or of the TF300 having more secret ram or anything.

That was the first thing that I noticed about this tab, is that the memory management on this tab is awesome. I can be running GTA3, have two or three tabs open in the browser and also be streaming music and the RAM only drops to about 550MB. At idle on a fresh boot, around 750MB free at idle, and If i do a task killer it will jump up to 830MB temporarily. I can only think it's becuase of the Tegra3 CPU. Regardless it's nice to see a tab with so much free RAM.

Scavar said:
Is it possible that it's just more efficient in the usage of it's 1GB of ram than the previous products? I can't find any mention anywhere of Tegra 3 specifically doing anything or of the TF300 having more secret ram or anything.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No because we're not talking about FREE RAM here we're taking about TOTAL RAM. either the system has more than 1GB or it's not sharing RAM with the video card.

das7771 said:
At idle on a fresh boot, around 750MB free at idle, and If i do a task killer it will jump up to 830MB temporarily. I can only think it's becuase of the Tegra3 CPU. Regardless it's nice to see a tab with so much free RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Huge amounts of free RAM is not something nice to see; it's a pointless waste. I guess that misunderstanding is still pervasive in the "OMG tasks are in RAM MUST KILL THEM" community ...

nightwulf said:
Huge amounts of free RAM is not something nice to see; it's a pointless waste. I guess that misunderstanding is still pervasive in the "OMG tasks are in RAM MUST KILL THEM" community ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Huge amounts of free RAM on a fresh boot is a GREAT thing. It means that the OS is lightweight and not loading tons of bloatware into memory. Now after using the tablet and opening tons of apps the free RAM should go down, if not then yes it is wasting RAM by dumping stuff out of memory.
But besides that the topic at hand is total RAM. more total RAM means more apps can stay in the background which means better multitasking.

They all actually have 1GB of RAM. The difference is simply that some chips separate the video RAM and the system RAM, where others are able to use a shared memory space and dynamically allocate RAM to video as necessary.
Most likely, devices with higher memory bandwidth will be able to use dynamically allocation because the extra bandwidth provides the overhead necessary to minimize performance impacts should the GPU need to pull more memory from the system on the fly.
On Tegra2 devices which were limited to 1 channel of 32bit ddr2, there is much less memory bandwidth than on tegra3 with ddr3 (or dual channel ddr2 like ipad). In this instance, it would cause a performance hit to have to free up extra memory from background tasks and then reallocate it to the gpu - so the solution is to just partition the entire memory into two sections each of which are generally large enough for both their respective duties: video ram and system ram.

EvoXOhio said:
Yeah DDR3 means it's faster and has more bandwidth, but that wouldn't affect whether the system has dedicated or shared video RAM.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
current reviews & memory benchmarks have shown the 300 ddr3 ram shows no Performance improvement over Prime ddr2. developers here can probably make the most it though.
Finally you all have your own section. CONGRATS!
---------- Post added at 10:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:25 AM ----------
a.mcdear said:
They all actually have 1GB of RAM. The difference is simply that some chips separate the video RAM and the system RAM, where others are able to use a shared memory space and dynamically allocate RAM to video as necessary.
Most likely, devices with higher memory bandwidth will be able to use dynamically allocation because the extra bandwidth provides the overhead necessary to minimize performance impacts should the GPU need to pull more memory from the system on the fly.
On Tegra2 devices which were limited to 1 channel of 32bit ddr2, there is much less memory bandwidth than on tegra3 with ddr3 (or dual channel ddr2 like ipad). In this instance, it would cause a performance hit to have to free up extra memory from background tasks and then reallocate it to the gpu - so the solution is to just partition the entire memory into two sections each of which are generally large enough for both their respective duties: video ram and system ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
he makes a great point. although no memory improvements shown in benchmarking, what he is saying could be seen as an improvement though. good info.
300 is not the only Tegra3 kid on the block with new DDR3 ram. Toshiba just released their Tegra3 Excite 10.1 in. tablet. it has gorilla glass, 1280x800 display, and 1gb DDR3 ram. available in 16 or 32gb. you can also order a 64gb.

demandarin said:
current reviews & memory benchmarks have shown the 300 ddr3 ram shows no Performance improvement over Prime ddr2. developers here can probably make the most it though.
Finally you all have your own section. CONGRATS!
---------- Post added at 10:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:25 AM ----------
he makes a great point. although no memory improvements shown in benchmarking, what he is saying could be seen as an improvement though. good info.
300 is not the only Tegra3 kid on the block with new DDR3 ram. Toshiba just released their Tegra3 Excite 10.1 in. tablet. it has gorilla glass, 1280x800 display, and 1gb DDR3 ram. available in 16 or 32gb. you can also order a 64gb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
500 bucks for a 32gig.... No sir.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium

In the spec section Amazon lists the TF300 as having 2GB of RAM...I'm sure its a mistype though.
http://www.amazon.com/Transformer-TF300-T-B1-BL-10-1-Inch-Tablet/dp/B007P4YAPK

Running 2.6 Kernel mine shows 983,2 MB of Total RAM.
After installing some nec. apps it drops down from ~850 MB to ~630 of
available RAM. After removal of most BW it shows ~820 MB of free RAM.
It's normal behaviour. It just acts like the Prime. Open it und you'll see a Prime with some faster MemoryChips & an optimized board design
I just hated my Prime for many reasons, but I really love this one
They've improved very much here

New Nexus10 shows total ram as 1.2gb via android assistant

New nexus 10 user here. came from an htc flyer. Anyways, android assistant shows total ram on my device as 1.2gb or so. Specs say thing has 2gb. Does any ones else's device report that or is that the way android assitant reports it? I am just wondering if i have a new device with ram issues. Also, with not much running, this things shows available ram like my Vivid (about 300gb or so ) and it is supposed to have 2x the amount of Ram.
Thanks for any insight.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk 2

What your seeing is correct. The Nexus 10 has 2GB of RAM on the motherboard, but 800MB of it is reserved specifically for the GPU. I still think it's kind of cheap marketing, but meh.
Before 4.2.2, only close to 400MB was reserved for the GPU, but apparently you could go past that limit in some cases, and it would cause userspace RAM fragmentation.

espionage724 said:
What your seeing is correct. The Nexus 10 has 2GB of RAM on the motherboard, but 800MB of it is reserved specifically for the GPU. I still think it's kind of cheap marketing, but meh.
Before 4.2.2, only close to 400MB was reserved for the GPU, but apparently you could go past that limit in some cases, and it would cause userspace RAM fragmentation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could copy that everytime a new user asks about this ram "issue", which isn't, since I saw you answered like 7 times? the same thing.

espionage724 said:
What your seeing is correct. The Nexus 10 has 2GB of RAM on the motherboard, but 800MB of it is reserved specifically for the GPU. I still think it's kind of cheap marketing, but meh.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not cheap marketing, laptop manufacturers have been doing this for ages with integrated video cards. It's a little deceptive but it's the norm for this. I the Galaxy Nexus also did it. I am not certain but I don't think any mobile device has dedicated video ram, I believe it just is not reported as missing.
The Galaxy Nexus shows as having 893mb of ram.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD

lKBZl said:
You could copy that everytime a new user asks about this ram "issue", which isn't, since I saw you answered like 7 times? the same thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there a problem with how I'm describing it? The Nexus 10 does have 2GB of RAM, with close to 800MB (I forget the exact amount but I know I reported it before) being reserved strictly for the GPU, and not userspace apps. I know it's not an "issue", but how I feel about it doesn't really mean too much at all though.
altimax98 said:
Not cheap marketing, laptop manufacturers have been doing this for ages with integrated video cards. It's a little deceptive but it's the norm for this. I the Galaxy Nexus also did it. I am not certain but I don't think any mobile device has dedicated video ram, I believe it just is not reported as missing.
The Galaxy Nexus shows as having 893mb of ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree it's kind of normal, but it's how much is missing that still bothers me. The Galaxy Nexus is said to have 1GB of RAM, and if what you say is true, you're missing only a tiny bit over 100MB (which, is nothing imo). The Nexus 10 on the other hand is missing nearly half the advertised amount (not literally "missing" but not usable under normal conditions).
I'm pretty sure most laptop GPU's don't take "that" much RAM either when it's not dedicated (most I've seen was 512MB shared video memory, on laptops containing 4GB of RAM; very small amount really)

espionage724 said:
What your seeing is correct. The Nexus 10 has 2GB of RAM on the motherboard, but 800MB of it is reserved specifically for the GPU. I still think it's kind of cheap marketing, but meh.
Before 4.2.2, only close to 400MB was reserved for the GPU, but apparently you could go past that limit in some cases, and it would cause userspace RAM fragmentation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the more i know and read about the n10 the more i feel being ripped off

Ripped of? For around $400-$500, you're getting a device with extremely high resolution (highest in its class EVER), a 1.7 GHz CPU with up to 2.1 possible, a software and hardware support guarantee from Google, an extremely competitive GPU, and future-proofing with the latest Android versions for years to come.
That sounds like a pretty damn good deal to me. I know I've loved my N10.
If you're having issues with your device its likely a manufacturing fault, just return it to Google and get a new one.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using XDA Premium HD app

hpl912 said:
the more i know and read about the n10 the more i feel being ripped off
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Rip off?
Have you checked how much usable space you have after formatting a 1GB drive? The N10 delivers the specified HW but there is always overhead required to use it, no matter which OS you have. That is just a fact of computing. I would argue that you get to use ALL of the N10 hardware when you accurately account for the a running OS and apps.
Compared to Win8 RT, Android (Linux) is a skinny fashion model. Go look at the Win8 RT tablet specs then see how much usable HW is left after it boots up. Here is just one example.

espionage724 said:
Is there a problem with how I'm describing it? The Nexus 10 does have 2GB of RAM, with close to 800MB (I forget the exact amount but I know I reported it before) being reserved strictly for the GPU, and not userspace apps. I know it's not an "issue", but how I feel about it doesn't really mean too much at all though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lol why do you take it like this? I just said you answered a lot of times the same, and you could copy it since i'm sure you'll have to answer that again' Where's the problem?

espionage724 said:
Is there a problem with how I'm describing it? The Nexus 10 does have 2GB of RAM, with close to 800MB (I forget the exact amount but I know I reported it before) being reserved strictly for the GPU, and not userspace apps. I know it's not an "issue", but how I feel about it doesn't really mean too much at all though.
I agree it's kind of normal, but it's how much is missing that still bothers me. The Galaxy Nexus is said to have 1GB of RAM, and if what you say is true, you're missing only a tiny bit over 100MB (which, is nothing imo). The Nexus 10 on the other hand is missing nearly half the advertised amount (not literally "missing" but not usable under normal conditions).
I'm pretty sure most laptop GPU's don't take "that" much RAM either when it's not dedicated (most I've seen was 512MB shared video memory, on laptops containing 4GB of RAM; very small amount really)
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I stand corrected about the Galaxy Nexus. It reports at 693 available ram.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD

Nexus 9 uses F2FS filesystem by default!

The Nexus 9 uses the F2FS (flash-friendly) filesystem as default, instead of EXT4! (see attached screenshot)
Also notice the 508 MB Swap partition in the screenshot...

edgarf28 said:
The Nexus 9 uses the F2FS (flash-friendly) filesystem as default, instead of EXT4! (see attached screenshot)
Also notice the 508 MB Swap partition in the screenshot...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you do a androbench benchmark please i want to know the storage performance
---------- Post added at 06:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------
edgarf28 said:
The Nexus 9 uses the F2FS (flash-friendly) filesystem as default, instead of EXT4! (see attached screenshot)
Also notice the 508 MB Swap partition in the screenshot...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is the swap file used for, is it for the cpu, does it use the ram?
The thing has the fastest set up it should be the most smoothest device ever made.
64 bit tegra k1 with geekbench single core performance of 2000 almost double that snapdragon 801.
Fastest internal storage chip. 15MB random write and 38MB random read.
Android lollipop
F2fs filesystem
2gb ram
---------- Post added at 06:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:03 PM ----------
bushgreen said:
Can you do a androbench benchmark please i want to know the storage performance
---------- Post added at 06:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------
What is the swap file used for, is it for the cpu, does it use the ram?
The thing has the fastest set up it should be the most smoothest device ever made.
64 bit tegra k1 with geekbench single core performance of 2000 almost double that snapdragon 801.
Fastest internal storage chip. 15MB random write and 38MB random read.
Android lollipop
F2fs filesystem
2gb ram
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
.
..

bushgreen said:
Can you do a androbench benchmark please i want to know the storage performance
---------- Post added at 06:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------
What is the swap file used for, is it for the cpu, does it use the ram?
The thing has the fastest set up it should be the most smoothest device ever made.
64 bit tegra k1 with geekbench single core performance of 2000 almost double that snapdragon 801.
Fastest internal storage chip. 15MB random write and 38MB random read.
Android lollipop
F2fs filesystem
2gb ram
---------- Post added at 06:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:03 PM ----------
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..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The 508 MB Swap partition do not use any RAM, I think it's just an partition on the internal memory to extent the RAM with 508 MB (so basically you have 1.8 Gb RAM + 508 MB Swap)
And see attached screenshot for the AndroBench results.

it is just plain stupid putting only 2GB ram on a 64Bit device and then helping out with 500MB swap. They could have easily add 3GB ram without any significant costs..
Funny thing is that the nexus 6 has 3GB ram and has a variant with 64GB disk.

Looks like f2fs is only used on the encrypted /data partition, /system and /cache still use ext4.
Also, the Nexus 9 actually has zram enabled, which explains the swap "partition". Having 2GB of memory with 0.5GB of zram is an interesting alternative to just using 3GB of memory instead.

farmerbb said:
Looks like f2fs is only used on the encrypted /data partition, /system and /cache still use ext4.
Also, the Nexus 9 actually has zram enabled, which explains the swap "partition". Having 2GB of memory with 0.5GB of zram is an interesting alternative to just using 3GB of memory instead.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no, it is not an interesting alternative, it is a stupid one in every way. the nexus 9 is already quite expensive. 1GB ram just costs a couple of dollars and room is more than enough within. and considering it is 64Bit it will bloat up ram usage anyway, not to forget that this high screen resolution eats up a lot of ram, too.

a user said:
no, it is not an interesting alternative, it is a stupid one in every way. the nexus 9 is already quite expensive. 1GB ram just costs a couple of dollars and room is more than enough within. and considering it is 64Bit it will bloat up ram usage anyway, not to forget that this high screen resolution eats up a lot of ram, too.
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Click to collapse
It's stupid until you realize how channeling works. The option to user zram is a very interesting one and it might be a better solution. So far benchmarks of the tablet agree with HTC/Google.
EDIT: also, in a serialized "queue" architecture like the this 64bit K1 with 2 cores, multitasking is not the priority. 2GB + zRam or 3GB should not make much difference.
Google opted for this kind of CPU in the N9 to make it as fast as an ipad air2 on your active task. You don't have multiple windows, you won't do true multitasking in this tablet. This is an ipad alternative, and even these architectural details show it.

FrankBullitt said:
It's stupid until you realize how channeling works. The option to user zram is a very interesting one and it might be a better solution. So far benchmarks of the tablet agree with HTC/Google.
EDIT: also, in a serialized "queue" architecture like the this 64bit K1 with 2 cores, multitasking is not the priority. 2GB + zRam or 3GB should not make much difference.
Google opted for this kind of CPU in the N9 to make it as fast as an ipad air2 on your active task. You don't have multiple windows, you won't do true multitasking in this tablet. This is an ipad alternative, and even these architectural details show it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
a lot of unrelated stuff in your post. there is no need for zram or swap (regarding the first posts its swap and not compressed ram, but i do not know myself what it is) if you get an extra 1GB of ram. 1 GB of ram is ALWAYS better than zram or swap. zram is a nice option when you cannot extend the memory for various reasons and swap may be used for heigh memory use cases when you have some not too slow alternate memory. n9 internal memory is still damn slow for swapping (if it is indeed a swap faile on disk at all).
but actually there seems to be no good reason to not add an extra GB as we can see the nexus 6 has it, the nexus 9 ha definetly room for it (it is not like pc dram module) and it is damn cheap also.
secondly, i'm not talking about multitasking when i pointed out 64bit, so why the hell are you bringing this in? beside of that on a tablet multitasking it meanwhile not so uncommen. the point is that a 64 bit os has a MUCH larger memory footprint. also such high screen resolutions add a decent amount of memory either. and finally, your argument about benchmarks proving anything related to my comment is unrelated at best. it doesn't prove anything related to my statement.
there is aboluelty no reason to prefere zram or swap over an extra GB of ram, and it seems that there is nothing that would made it difficult for htc to add it. i can only assume that they added this just collect some experience on it and nothing more.
i really don't get it. what's the purpose of your statement? showing of your lack of knowledge or celebrating fanboyship "oh cool, they skipped a 5$ GB ram but gave us zram hurayyyyy".
sounds totally sound to give a smartphone 1GB ram more, same high resoltion on a smaller screen and twice as much disk space
EDIT: but please finally tell us WHAT exactly is so "interessting" adding zram or swap instead of one GB ram? you post has no information except this little claim. one might find this decision interesting of course due to its stupidity but it doesn't look that this is the source of your interest.

Any conjecture or theoretical analysis is ultimately pretty meaningless. Just let the performance speak for itself.

@mkygod hallelujah !! ??

a user said:
a lot of unrelated stuff in your post. there is no need for zram or swap (regarding the first posts its swap and not compressed ram, but i do not know myself what it is) if you get an extra 1GB of ram. 1 GB of ram is ALWAYS better than zram or swap. zram is a nice option when you cannot extend the memory for various reasons and swap may be used for heigh memory use cases when you have some not too slow alternate memory. n9 internal memory is still damn slow for swapping (if it is indeed a swap faile on disk at all).
but actually there seems to be no good reason to not add an extra GB as we can see the nexus 6 has it, the nexus 9 ha definetly room for it (it is not like pc dram module) and it is damn cheap also.
secondly, i'm not talking about multitasking when i pointed out 64bit, so why the hell are you bringing this in? beside of that on a tablet multitasking it meanwhile not so uncommen. the point is that a 64 bit os has a MUCH larger memory footprint. also such high screen resolutions add a decent amount of memory either. and finally, your argument about benchmarks proving anything related to my comment is unrelated at best. it doesn't prove anything related to my statement.
there is aboluelty no reason to prefere zram or swap over an extra GB of ram, and it seems that there is nothing that would made it difficult for htc to add it. i can only assume that they added this just collect some experience on it and nothing more.
i really don't get it. what's the purpose of your statement? showing of your lack of knowledge or celebrating fanboyship "oh cool, they skipped a 5$ GB ram but gave us zram hurayyyyy".
sounds totally sound to give a smartphone 1GB ram more, same high resoltion on a smaller screen and twice as much disk space
EDIT: but please finally tell us WHAT exactly is so "interessting" adding zram or swap instead of one GB ram? you post has no information except this little claim. one might find this decision interesting of course due to its stupidity but it doesn't look that this is the source of your interest.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No...you would understand what he was talking about if you understood what he meant by "architecture". The Tegra K1 chip employed by the N9, aka Project Denver, is the first in order execution CPU since...like, 1990.......This device was never designed to multitask, as the CPU itself was designed to finish tasks in order, and be damn fast at that.
Here, read up on this: http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidias-64bit-Tegra-K1-The-Ghost-of-Transmeta-Rides-Again/
Adding 1GB of RAM is useless, since 64bit really needs 4 & up to shine, it doesn't make a difference whether or not you tack on another GB.....

UAL4588 said:
No...you would understand what he was talking about if you understood what he meant by "architecture". The Tegra K1 chip employed by the N9, aka Project Denver, is the first in order execution CPU since...like, 1990.......This device was never designed to multitask, as the CPU itself was designed to finish tasks in order, and be damn fast at that.
Here, read up on this: http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidias-64bit-Tegra-K1-The-Ghost-of-Transmeta-Rides-Again/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i know very well how denver works and it still has nothing to do with what i said.
Adding 1GB of RAM is useless, since 64bit really needs 4 & up to shine, it doesn't make a difference whether or not you tack on another GB.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's simply not true! 64bit does not shine more orn 4GB ram or on 12GB. you need 64bit for 4GB+ ram (while 4GB actually works on 32bit with PAE). but i am not talking about when 64bit is needed to allow for more memory. i am talking about the double sized memory pointers, the bigger size ints and longs, due to 64bit! this caused all native code to consume far more memory. but as ia already said multiple times, not only the 64bit os itself eats a lot of memory it also the high resolution graphics but also the meanwhile increased resolution assets of android.
i don't say that it is actually needed to install more memory. but if they decided to add zram it seems they actually needed more memory. the point is that it is stupid to extend the memory with zram instead of just simply adding 1GB ram.
i can't say it more clearly. the stupidity is to NOT INSTALL 1GB MORE RAM BUT INSTEAD USE ZRAM TO MAKE UP FOR LACK OF MEMORY.

It doesnt need a swap file 2gb ram is enough

UAL4588 said:
No...you would understand what he was talking about if you understood what he meant by "architecture". The Tegra K1 chip employed by the N9, aka Project Denver, is the first in order execution CPU since...like, 1990.......This device was never designed to multitask, as the CPU itself was designed to finish tasks in order, and be damn fast at that.
Here, read up on this: http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidias-64bit-Tegra-K1-The-Ghost-of-Transmeta-Rides-Again/
Adding 1GB of RAM is useless, since 64bit really needs 4 & up to shine, it doesn't make a difference whether or not you tack on another GB.....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Arm chips didn't really start to use out of order instructions until the cortex a9, sometime around the Tegra 2 and the atrix. There were plenty, literally hundreds of android phones with cortex a7 and a8 cpu's with in order execution. (Think of the older snapdragons, the hummingbird, the omap's) Because this CPU happens to be an in order processor, doesn't mean its now a non multitasking tablet or OS. Multitasking performance should not be expected to get WORSE, with better hardware(I'm not saying it is, but it shouldn't be expected).
Yes 64 bit processors shine with above 4 gigs of ram(as far as mapping more memory), but 64 bit applications have a larger memory footprint than the same application compiled for 32 bit CPU's(uses more ram). So with the higher resolution and 64 bit OS, 2 gigs of ram may be pushing it, and it is probably why they added the swap.
No matter how you slice it, ram is always better than swap. Ram is always gonna be faster memory than a large storage device. If they thought 2 gigs would not be enough ram, swap should not have even be a consideration, just make it 3. The nexus 10 was a prime example of this due to the screen resolution and the GPU needing too much ram. Most of the 10's issues were the CPU not having quite enough power and not enough ram. Chrome would refresh pages with just a few tabs open when switching between them.

I personally would not trust a young filesystem that was initiated by Samsung.
Both of the above sounds like my data is at risk

After playing with it for a few days , I observed reload of the launcher sometimes. I am not sure if Lollipop is not yet well optimized for N9 or whatever. I think that 3GB of ram should be better.

2gb Ram is plenty it does not need the swap file
I hope the swap file ain't causing any slow downs or lag because it is reading writing to it instead of using the main ram

edgarf28 said:
The 508 MB Swap partition do not use any RAM, I think it's just an partition on the internal memory to extent the RAM with 508 MB (so basically you have 1.8 Gb RAM + 508 MB Swap)
And see attached screenshot for the AndroBench results.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A swap partition is just that, it swaps memory to a file system when memory or other resources are gone. Some applications will do it by default.
I'm positive you don't have a grasp on linux or *inux systems. You should read up on 'em.

I beg to differ... I'm so sick and tired of all my apps getting booted out of memory the moment they're off-screen. Even the damn launcher vanishes way too quick and takes an eternity to reload. This tablet sucks for multi taking, even though the gorgeous screen is taylor-made for it.

a user said:
i know very well how denver works and it still has nothing to do with what i said.
that's simply not true! 64bit does not shine more orn 4GB ram or on 12GB. you need 64bit for 4GB+ ram (while 4GB actually works on 32bit with PAE). but i am not talking about when 64bit is needed to allow for more memory. i am talking about the double sized memory pointers, the bigger size ints and longs, due to 64bit! this caused all native code to consume far more memory. but as ia already said multiple times, not only the 64bit os itself eats a lot of memory it also the high resolution graphics but also the meanwhile increased resolution assets of android.
i don't say that it is actually needed to install more memory. but if they decided to add zram it seems they actually needed more memory. the point is that it is stupid to extend the memory with zram instead of just simply adding 1GB ram.
i can't say it more clearly. the stupidity is to NOT INSTALL 1GB MORE RAM BUT INSTEAD USE ZRAM TO MAKE UP FOR LACK OF MEMORY.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Totally agree with this, I'd be happy to pay $10-$20 more for and extra 1 to 2 Gb or ram.
Then they could have gone something like 4GB Ram + zram
Would have been better
And while denver may be an In order design, its 7 way Superscalar which should outweigh the benifits of a 3 way OoOE Design for multitasking