Will windows allocate more than 4 gig RAM?
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Will windows allocate more than 4 gig RAM?Expand / Collapse
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rena03sb
Posted 7/1/2008 11:25:05 AM





According to an IT guy at work (who happens to love MAC...) anymore than
4 gig RAM using a Windows based OS is a waste.

I have a new computer en-route with Vista 64 Home Premium Edition. It
comes with 4 gig of ram and is upgradable to 8 gig (I assume due to
limited slots on the mobo).

Is there any truth to what he said? Basically he said that my Vista 64
will 'see' 8 gigs of RAM but will only allocate up to 4 gigs for use,
therefore it's a waste of money to add RAM to my system....:confused:


--
rena03sb
Post #145843
Carl Kaufmann
Posted 7/1/2008 12:45:14 PM




Post in reply to: rena03sb


He needs to get out of the IT field since he clearly has no idea what
he's talking about.

64-bit versions of Visa and XP will happily address 128 GiB of
memory. 32-bit versions will address only 4 GiB. Keep in mind that
a certain chunk of the address space will be devoted to device I/O,
which means that you don't get to use all 4 (or 128) GiB if you have
that much installed.

Things get weird with server versions, but anyone who's playing with
them should to be able to figure it out or stop playing with servers.

32-bit programs running on a 64-bit OS can use up to 4 GiB.

HTH.

Carl
Post #145901
Dustin Harper
Posted 7/1/2008 2:25:08 PM




Post in reply to: rena03sb
No, that is a limitation of any 32 bit version of an operating system. Since
you are getting x64, you have nothing to worry about. A 64 bit OS supports
more than your motherboard can handle (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit).



--

Dustin Harper
dharper@vistarip.com
http://www.vistarip.com | Vista Resource & Information Page

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Post #145962
Xenomorph
Posted 7/4/2008 12:45:36 PM




Post in reply to: rena03sb
Windows will happily use 4, 6, 8, 16 Gigs, or whatever else you have in your
system.

With RAM so cheap, it's not uncommon to see people using 8 gigs of RAM now.

Windows *will* use it all. You can load a ton of apps that all run without
slowdown (no need to page!), and Windows will cache a ton of suff. A lot of
file/disk caching, and Superfetch loads a lot of stuff into memory so you
can open it super-quick.

The more memory, the smoother everything goes!

The only way you'd be limited to 4 Gigs is if you are running a 32-bit OS
(Mac included).




Post #148259
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