how is 4GB or more of RAM working for you guys in Vista?

I

InCogneato

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 1, 2006
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ok i know that 32 bit XP can only read 2 or 3gb of ram? im not sure how it works with 64bit XP.

but how is the 4GB or more of RAM working for you guys in Vista? are all your apps able to use them, are they smoking fast?


details please :D
 
InCogneato said:
ok i know that 32 bit XP can only read 2 or 3gb of ram? im not sure how it works with 64bit XP.
Click to expand...
The FAQ Thread has a link to an Excellent Post about how address spaces work and why 32-bit windows is somewhat limited in this area.

If you read Mike's post carefully you will notice that 64-bit OSs ought to be able to spread out the address space over a significantly larger area, pretty much eliminating the problems that crop up with 32-bit Windows XP and 'large' amounts of memory.
 
ward148 said:
32 bit can only read 2 or 3 gb of ram! I just ordered 4gb for vista 32bit, did i just throw money away
Click to expand...

Actually that is wrong.
MikeBlas said:
Memory is the most readily accessible large-volume storage available to the processor. Bytes of data readily accessible to the processor are identified by a memory address, which by convention starts at zero and ranges to the upper limit addressible by the processor. 32-bit processors typically use memory addresses that are 32 bits wide. The 32-bit wide address allows the processor to address 2^32 bytes of memory, which is exactly 4,294,967,296 bytes, or four gigabytes. This is the direct source of the four-gigabyte memory addressing limitation.
Click to expand...

So, if you processor can run WinXP, it will have a 32-bit wide memory address, therefore it can access 4GiB of memory.
 
I have 4X1GB sticks in my system. BIOS reports 4GB of RAM.
Running XP 32bit, my system saw 3.25GB of RAM.
I installed Vista 32bit, my system saw 3.25GB of RAM.
I just installed Vista 64bit, my system now shows 4GB of RAM.
The 32bit versions of both Vista and XP felt the same. Same speed, etc.
The 64bit Vista seems so much faster. Things go quicker and it felt like a
brand new OS unlike the 32bit Vista.
All my drivers work fine as well as all the apps and games I installed.
So far so good. If I were to recommend an upgrade to someone, it would just
have to be the 64bit version.
My 2 cents.
 
chuckjoy said:
I have 4X1GB sticks in my system. BIOS reports 4GB of RAM.
Running XP 32bit, my system saw 3.25GB of RAM.
I installed Vista 32bit, my system saw 3.25GB of RAM.
I just installed Vista 64bit, my system now shows 4GB of RAM.
The 32bit versions of both Vista and XP felt the same. Same speed, etc.
The 64bit Vista seems so much faster. Things go quicker and it felt like a
brand new OS unlike the 32bit Vista.
All my drivers work fine as well as all the apps and games I installed.
So far so good. If I were to recommend an upgrade to someone, it would just
have to be the 64bit version.
My 2 cents.
Click to expand...
Yep. I don't understand why Microsoft didn't go ahead and force a 64-bit upgrade while they were at it. We're bumping against the ceiling of 32-bit as it is, and here we arewith a new 32-bit OS.
 
Let's be clear that it is 4GB of addressable memory. That includes system BIOS memory, video RAM, sound cards with accessible memory, physics cards, and etc. In a simplistic example if you have 4GB of RAM and a 256MB video card, you can only access 3.75GB of that RAM minus the other address space taken by the system. You will never be able to fully access the 4GB of RAM in a 32-bit OS.
 
CubicleGeek said:
Let's be clear that it is 4GB of addressable memory. That includes system BIOS memory, video RAM, sound cards with accessible memory, physics cards, and etc. In a simplistic example if you have 4GB of RAM and a 256MB video card, you can only access 3.75GB of that RAM minus the other address space taken by the system. You will never be able to fully access the 4GB of RAM in a 32-bit OS.
Click to expand...

That clears it up pretty well.. thanks for that. :cool:
 
pervisanathema said:
So if you are running 32 bit Vista with 4GB of ram and 8800GTX SLI, you will only see ~2.5GB of ram since the cards have ~1.5GB combined?
Click to expand...

I'm actually not sure if two cards in SLI count the memory twice because afaik, the same information is written to both cards, it might just appear as 768MB of addressable memory mirrored on two cards. If you run 2 cards separately, then yes, your 2 8800GTX's just took up close to half of your total addressable memory space.
 
chuckjoy said:
I have 4X1GB sticks in my system. BIOS reports 4GB of RAM.
Running XP 32bit, my system saw 3.25GB of RAM.
I installed Vista 32bit, my system saw 3.25GB of RAM.
I just installed Vista 64bit, my system now shows 4GB of RAM.
The 32bit versions of both Vista and XP felt the same. Same speed, etc.
The 64bit Vista seems so much faster. Things go quicker and it felt like a
brand new OS unlike the 32bit Vista.
All my drivers work fine as well as all the apps and games I installed.
So far so good. If I were to recommend an upgrade to someone, it would just
have to be the 64bit version.
My 2 cents.
Click to expand...

This is really interesting. I just bought my Vista Home Premium today and ordered the 64 bit version. If this is true, then I will wait until it comes in before my install. I was really looking forward to playing with Vista today....LOL. I have 4 gig of ram and don't want to waste it.

Has anyone else confirmed this?
 
Vista Ultimate 32bit here, shows 3.3gig. I bought the retail version and have the 64bit disk standing by. I'll install it in a few weeks, when a few more signed drivers for my hardware are released (Creative, HP and Logitech, you all suck!!!).

Shawn
 
Ultimate 32 bit here and an 8800gtx and shoiwng just 2.5 of the 4............going 64 bit
 
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