I have a home built desktop computer with the following components:
Gigabyte GA8VM800PMD m/b with two 512 MB DDR2 RAM Chips,Onboard audio,LAN,S3 VIA video chip,and Seagate 160 GB S A T A H.D. with
Windows Vista installed.
The problem I have had recently is that the BIOS memory-Award?-count
only lists 956 Mb RAM memory,when about three weeks before the RAM memory count was over ! GB!!
Other than a few apps not responding when multitasking,i.e. downloading
files while working with other apps,the computer and O.S.have remained fairly error free.I was wondering whetther my BIOS flash is going bad,my ram chips need replacing,or does my cpu-Intel Celeron D 2.66 GHz need replacing????
Any tips and suggestions appreciated!!:

1024 - 956 = 68

I would think that 68 is being used by your integrated graphics.

The only thing I see strange is that it was ever any different.

Integrated graphics always use system RAM.

I see no problem.

The number of Ram memory I specified as not read right by my BIOS
is the TOTAL memory coun for the add on RAM+ the integrated graphics chip!
I have gotten the page file managed with Windows on two(2!!) hard drives:
the Seagate 160 G ,and a Seagate 40 G PATA hard drive,so that might be why the system runs great with a deficit of 40-60 MB of "lost" RAM!!
Thanks for the reply Jephree(?)!

So what does Windows detect? Right click My Computer then click Properties.

Also what does CPU_Z detect.

You can also run MemTest if you like.

I doubt that there is any major problem as per RAM or CPU or BIOS. I would say the difference is basically insignificant although I can understand the perplexity and annoyance.

Vista is running pretty much on a minimum spec on that computer to begin with so some slowness would be expected even if all was perfect.