Memory issue on XP

[Whatever]

I bought a new XP machine and had it loaded with 4 x 1GB memory sticks. If I go to the Crucial memory check it sees the correct amount of memory. However, my machine reports there being only 3.25GB RAM if I check via Control Panel > System and if i check via Task manager it shows:

Physical memory

Total: 3405928 (K)
Available: 2153436 (K)
System Cache: 2018244 (K)

If i check via dxdiag, the memory is reported as:

Memory: 3326MB RAM
Page File: 1091MB used; 4143MB available

I know XP has an issue reporting over a certain amount of memory even if it's still using it but when playing games I find the frames stuttering a fair amount and images not being drawn onto the screen properly. Considering there's 4 GB in there I wouldn't have thought there should be much stuttering! The graphics aren't set to maximum either.

I have a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT installed.

Any ideas on programs that could tell me how much memory the PC can actually recognize or anything I can do to check?

[JasonD]

I thought 32bit Windows only supports 3GB of ram.

RAM won't do much for your graphics anyway, that will be entirely down to your graphics card.

[Whatever]

I thought you could increase it with a tweak in the registry and even so, if it wouldn't support should the vendor have sold it like this and allowed me to upgrade to the 4GB??

[JasonD]

Then your issue lies with the vendor.