Quick question-
I believe most of the applications present today max out at a total of 2GB. Now can Win XP or Vista (32bit editions) utilise the full 3-3.5GB or will it too be limited to 2GB.
Rig I’m planning to build-
Intel QuadCore E6600
Gigabyte X38-DQ6
nVidia 8500 GT\GTS (256-312MB)
2 x 500GB SATAII (8MB Cache)
3 x 320GB SATAI (4-8MB Cache)
1 x 250GB SATAI (4MB Cache)
SATA DVDRW
Creative X-Fi Sound Card
Do advice
ms? Dude. Speak (International) English when your allowed to go out in public!
“The proper solution to this whole conundrum is to use a 64-bit operating system.” Why go so far over the top? A 33-bit operating system would solve the problem by giving you twice the addressing power of a 32-bit system. Why do we need 4,294,967,296 times the address space? Don’t tell me that we doubled it in going from 16 to 32 or that 33, 34 or 35 are odd numbers. There is no implementation problem with coping with 33, 34 or 35 bits. These are exponents we are talking about dude! There is no comparison in practical terms between doubling from 16-bits to 32-bits and in going from 32-bits to 64-bits. In 16-bit days it was always on the cards that 32-bits worth of physical RAM might be possible. 64-bits worth of physical RAM? Not for a very very long time if at all.
I run Pro Audio apps and don’t play games. So let’s say I were shopping for a new computer. It seems like it would make the most sense to stick with a graphics card that had the least amount of RAM and still drive my display - thereby saving system RAM. If I can get an extra .4 gigs for the system I’ll take it!
The whole 32 versus 64bit controversy is mute when it comes to memory addressing. If the hardware supports more memory, the only limitation is the OS. Linux 32-bit can use over 4GB and Windows 32-bit cannot. It is that simple. Add in whatever modified math from the 486 days you wish, when it comes down to it, it is based on the OS if the hardware is capable. Motherboard manufacturers have built in many of the PAE type I/O switches needed to make this possible. Make as much of the memory available to the OS as is installed, regardless if it is 32 or 64-bit.
I have a tri-boot system with a Core2Duo: 32bit XP, 64bit Vista and 32bit Fedora Core7 with 8GB of memory in this system. XP sees 3.5GB, Vista sees 7.5GB and Fedora sees all 8GB. I have enabled PAE in XP and it still only sees max 3.95GB, enabling PAE in Vista does nothing to get the other 512MB and no PAE switches or kernel modes needed with any linux kernel that is 2.4 or newer… although the 2.6.X kernels have much better support for memory over 4GB without a performance hit. Some specific distros may have their own personal issues with 32bit and 4GB+ of memory but the rest of the linux community has already fixed it.
how come nobody tells you this bullshit before buying ?
why can we not sue motherboard manufacturers who write “up to 4gigs of ddr” ? it’s like buying a car advertised for having a 200kg tank, but 50kg are for air suction.
guess what none of the sellers I spoke to new about the 32 bit shit.
besides what is the point of ddr2, 3 or 4 with 2 or 4 gigs per memory when your computer won’t see it?
Wow! (and no, not “windows on windows”) Long and interesting thread with so many, “to sum it up”…
“so from what I gather”…
“just finished reading this”…
“it’s the hardware”
“it’s the OS”
“windows sucks”
“Linux rules”
“strictly a hardware issue”
“very interesting, but…”
“my logic is this…”
"I’m no genius"
MB, GB, Ram, PAE, …
And now to summarize:
ATWWID
And they wonder why I drink!
Good Job!
What does the “x” in “x64” stand for?
x86 is the generic name for Intel processors released after the original 8086 processor. These include the 286, 386, 486, and 586 processors. As you can see, the “x” in x86 stands for a range of possible numbers. Technically, x86 is short for 80x86 since the full names of the processors are actually 80286, 80386, 80486, and 80586. The “80” is typically truncated to avoid redundancy.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080110064759AAobnrX
I am an “indy” publisher of PC games from Japan (well, dating-sims if you must know), and I am floored by this ridiculous limitation of Windows. Our games don’t run all that well in 64 bit Vista and XP and we probably can’t upgrade at any time in the future, at least our older games. So is there no option like Wine that runs the 32 bit virtual machine inside the 64 computer? What did Apple do right that all their programs “just work” in my Mac Pro with 9 GB?
Microsoft has about 20x the market share as Apple. The reason is, they go out of their way to not break stuff when they upgrade their OS. This keeps businesses happy because they don’t have to spend effort to upgrade their software for each OS. This helps Microsoft sell more copies of Windows because instead of Businesses saying, “Well our software won’t work anyways on the new version of Windows, let’s evaluate switching over to Apple.”
You evaluation of Apple doing it “right” is from a Aesthetics stand point. Microsoft got it right in the business sense. This is evident by the market share.
What Apple did right is simply brute force the change. If Microsoft had said “Vista will NOT be compatible with early windows, get used to it or get stuffed!” and made it 64bit only and forced it, we’d not be in half the grief we are now.
It worked for apple, and they did it TWICE (motorola - powerpc and powerpc - intel)
cool… so the following choices are available…
1: buy 4 gig for a 32 bit OS and only be able to take advantage of 3 of them
2: buy 64 bit OS as well and STILL only be able to use 3 gig of your RAM
3: buy vista, and NEED 1 gig extra just to run the blasted OS so you STILL only get 3 gig available.
I checked the M$ definitions … what a masterful piece of spin wording they have. Well done M$ - another fantastic rear-ender for the general public. Technically I’d call it lies, but then, I don’t work in the word of advertising. I live in the real world.
Roll on a fully functional Windows environment within a Linux system.
typo
2: buy 64 bit OS as well and then find there are no drivers available so everything runs slow and in 32 bit mode. See the full 4 gig, but be unable to use the modem, network card, graphix or sound to full potential etc etc… you get the idea.
I have the feeling the last 2 posters have never used Vista x64.
Despite the Windows address space limitations, would it still make sense to use 4GB Ram on Windows XP Pro if one plans to create a Ram Disk? Can such a “vrtual” drive somehow take advantage of the “missing” space invisible to the operating system itself?
No, it’s not a hardware problem, its a Windows problem.
You knuckleheads can keep on bleating that it is hardware, but with Linux, my 32-bit OS kernel can use 4GB, even if processes can only address up to 3GB. So I can happily use all of my memory, since I don’t run processes that need more than 3GB.
Windows does not let me do this.
How is this a fault of the hardware? It’s not.
It’s a fault of Windows, a shortcoming of Windows, a flaw in 32 bit Windows, a compromise Microsoft decided to make in Windows. So it’s Windows that is broken. Windows.
Clear yet? Don’t blame the hardware Windows being hamstrung.
i haev 3Gigs system ram adn 1 Gig bideo card video ram detected in windows xp home 1024.0 system ram 3gb when i install the 4th gig of system ram its not detected at all.
It is simple math. think in base-2 (binary) with the ‘bit’ being the exponent. the base is, of course, 2, the 32-bit would make it 2^32, calculate that and you get how many BITS a 32-BIT computer can address. How can you blame microsoft for not making their 32-bit OS able to bend the laws of mathemathcs and change the answer to 2^32 just so you can use more than 4GB of ram? just like our eyes cannot see more than 3 dimension, a 32-bit OS cannot see more than 4GB of RAM. Upgrade to x64, and computers will continue to evolve. Dont, and 5 generations of Windows OSs down the road, we will have terahertz CPUs, 18 GPUs, 20.1 surround sound, 18TB of hard drives, and 4GB of ram.
JamesW, nice try at making *nix sound far superior…
But the fact of the matter is…
PAE is not Manufacturer or developer specific issue, (PAE)Physical Address Extension is a solution to a hardware-centric problem.
Yes,some Linux(2.6 an above), FreeBSD, Solaris and others support PAE out of the box. But, this does not guarantee compatibility with firmware, drivers, or software packages–it simply means the kernel and some software running on 32bit processors can address 4GB+. Which is why you’ll find many more power *nix users running 64bit OS’s, and not a 32bit OS with PAE–as long as their hardware supports 64bit, and they need the extra RAM.
Windows had a PAE-type solution in the AWE mechanism mentioned in the article. However, it would seem that Microsoft is no longer interested in applying a band-aid to the problem, and instead will likely switch gears–or so the “interweb” rumors say, about Windows7–to push 64bit OS’s on launch day. Even though, at least 4 or 5 32bit Windows versions support PAE…
!BUT! The fact still remains that, for any PAE fix to work, the environment must also have the right(PAE supported) hardware and software; that includes CPU, OS, firmware, middleware, et al.