Size of installed RAM vs what KInfocenter reports

[Snowhog]

Okay. Why, when I have 8 GB of RAM installed, does KInfocenter report 7.60 GB?

[SteveRiley]

Your brain is thinking in gigabytes, while KDE is thinking gibibytes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte vs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

[SteveRiley]

You can change this at System Settings -> Locale -> Country/Region & Language -> Other.

[Snowhog]

Cool. Thank you.

[SteveRiley]

Oh -- don't ever go around saying "gibibytes" at a geek party or whatever. I promise you'll get the snot kicked out of you

[Qqmike]

Now THAT bit of advice (party protocol) is helpful
Actually, I have never liked the "bi" business. It even sounds a little, shall we say, light off the tongue ...

[MoonRise]

Was wondering about that! Thanks!

[SteveRiley]

never liked the "bi" business. It even sounds a little, shall we say, light off the tongue ...

Truly, they are bits that swing both ways! BWAHAHAHAHA

[MoonRise]

[Qqmike]

Well, that just simply sends gi-bi-bytes up my spine ... I just love those powers of two, don't you?

[SteveRiley]

I just love those powers of two, don't you?

Three is better.

[jlittle]

Your brain is thinking in gigabytes, while KDE is thinking gibibytes.

While this surely explains why KInfocenter says 8,161,075,00 = 7.6 GiB, it does not answer the question as to why it does not show as 8 GiB, which is very likely to be the amount of RAM in Snowhog's computer.
I would guess that the computer has on-board graphics, and some of the RAM is dedicated to that.

[Qqmike]

Just waking up, too early here to poke around in my empty component packaging/manuals, but I suspect you have to read the specs that came with the memory modules--ditto for things like flash drives--to see how the manufacturer measures and advertises the memory specification, powers of 2, or powers of 10. Seems I recall this is an issue for flash drives. (Then, you still gotta minus the overhead-system or reserve memory used by the manufacturer.)

[Qqmike]

For example, Crucial memory:

"Gigabyte An amount of memory equal to 1024 megabytes (1,073,741,824 bytes) of information. Abbreviated GB. Other common DRAM units of measurement are kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes. Because bytes contain 8 bits of information, gigabytes are naturally larger than gigabits."

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/support-glossary

- - - - -

Powers of 2 for Crucial, then. I suspect that's usually the case; the term gigabyte is misused--as an industry norm. But, as mentioned above, you must still check to see how much of that theoretical capacity is reported in your utility.

[jlittle]

... the term gigabyte is misused--as an industry norm...

For DRAM the term gigabyte still commonly refers to 2^30. But that's not the point, for addressing reasons it does not make sense to make RAM in anything other than powers of 2; in my admittedly limited (but long) experience I've never heard of RAM being made otherwise. The OP's computer's RAM is very unlikely to be 7.6 GiB.