How much RAM for Win XP Home Ed?

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garry26

Gawd
Joined
Jan 8, 2003
Messages
641
I have a system in the works and I asked advice on what vid card I should get on the video card board. One of the messages I got was:

8gbs of ram on a 32bit operating system? you know you can use it all right? 3gbs is the maximum i believe for a 32bit operating system.

if you take 4gbs off of it then you should have more money left over for a better card.
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So that prompted this post :(

My specs will be:
CPU: Q6600 w/Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Intel
MB: Gigabyte GA-P34=S3G P35
RAM: DDR2 8GBs
Vid Card: 8800 GTS 512MB
HD: 320GB w/fan
Case has a side fan + 2 other fans
600W PSU
Win XP Home Ed

So, whats the deal with the 8gb and Win XP? Is it fine or do I have a problem?
 
Ok, it's not a Windows XP problem per se. It's a problem with all 32bit OSes. 32 Bit OSes can only address 4GB of RAM minus the resources used by the video card, PCI cards, and system, etc. So basically with Window XP Home, Pro, and Vista Home Premium you'll only be able to use 3 to 3.5GB of RAM depending on your hardware.

If you want to use more than 3.5GB of RAM, you will need a 64bit OS like Vista Home Premium 64bit or Windows 64bit (Or basically any OS with 64bit in its name). If you're sticking with XP Home, don't get more than 4GB of RAM. If you have a legitimate reason to use 8GB of RAM (Like virtualization, photoshop, heavy media editing and rendering, etc), then go with a 64bit OS.
 
I will be using Photshop (or GIMP the freesource version), pay2play MMO type games, Second Life (uses much system resources), etc.

Ok so as it stands I have:
Microsoft Windows XP Home CD

I should get Microsoft Windows XP Pofessional 64 Bit CD???
 
No, you should get Vista Home Premium x64. XP64 is not well supported but 64-bit Vista is, almost everything runs in it.
 
With the system your doing, Vista x64 is the ONLY way to go. Don't even consider the other options.
 
But...but...Vista is hell....
Or so i hear. They even made fun of it on late night.

Thats why people still use XP on their builds. I heard its a uses a lot of resources too
 
sigh.....with your build Vista will run flawlessy. you have plenty plenty of memory for those resources.
 
hmm my intent is to get 4gb now and add 4gb later when I find a nice deal :)
Will it run on 4gb (for a while) w/o problems?
Will my system run flawlessly on Vista while running resource intensive programs/games?

Thx
 
My laptop runs Vista 32-bit flawlessly on 3gb of RAM. From what I hear, it'd run 64-bit equally flawlessly.

Vista is resource-intensive, but if you've got the resources, as you do, there's no good reason not to use it, especially when you're going to be installing 8gb of RAM.
 
I guess thats the way to go. I was afraid because my anti-virus is a bit of a hog + I would be running resource hungry applications. I thought Vista on top of all that, would be problematic. Plus I was thinking of the future and how resource hungry things would be in a few years.
 
Vista runs fine on my old Athlon 64 3000 with 1GB of RAM. You'll be fine. ;)

The people who say Vista is crap are full of it.
 
I'd give Vista x64 a shot if you really want 4 or 8gb of ram, but if you really don't want Vista, go with XP Pro x64 Edition. I'm running it right now and it's the most stable OS i've ever used. The driver and software support is lacking slightly compared to its 32-bit brother, but so far it has been more stable than Vista ever was for me. Vista would bork itself for no reason with just normal usage while XP x64 is rock solid and no issues, for me, at least. If you want to pay for anti-virus software, go with NOD32. Very lightweight and very good at what it does. It's also pretty cheap.
 
garry26 said:
But...but...Vista is hell....
Or so i hear. They even made fun of it on late night.

Thats why people still use XP on their builds. I heard its a uses a lot of resources too
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It is trendy to pick on Vista. While I admit I haven't been using it exclusively for long, it works like a charm so far.
 
Domini said:
people dont like it because it doesn't offer much improvement over xp.
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That's true, and I wouldn't recommend that many people upgrade an XP installation to Vista. As for a new install though, I would certainly (and did) get Vista.
 
garry26 said:
But...but...Vista is hell....
Or so i hear. They even made fun of it on late night.

Thats why people still use XP on their builds. I heard its a uses a lot of resources too
Click to expand...
I was going to go off on a rant, but I will heed your sig and be gentle. Based on the question you asked at the top, I'd definitely agree with your first portion of your sig. That's fine, we all started sometime. I'm going to give you a great piece of advice:

Learn to do your own reading and questioning, instead of believing what you "hear".

Vista x64 is a perfectly fine OS, especially with that hardware. As mentioned a bazillion times, if you want to use all your memory, you'll need an x64 OS. That being said, if you are going to buy one, why not buy Vista instead? Yes it uses more resources, but that is always the case. The point is...it USES more resources. Did you buy 8 GB of memory so you could try and use as little of it as possible?

The second piece of advice I'll give you is this....don't ever trust tech news, advice, or opinions from main stream media outlets, like the nightly news or "late night".

As for "that's why people use XP on their builds"...look around. I think you might see that isn't true.
 
number69 said:
You're very lucky.
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Why would he be lucky? That's well above Vista's minimum standards. I have it running on an HP tower that has a P4 2.8 and 1 GB of memory (not ven in dual channel) and onboard Intel 950 graphics, and it runs fine.
 
DeaconFrost said:
Why would he be lucky? That's well above Vista's minimum standards. I have it running on an HP tower that has a P4 2.8 and 1 GB of memory (not ven in dual channel) and onboard Intel 950 graphics, and it runs fine.
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I've built several dozen rigs with Vista loaded on them, 1 gig IMO doesn't cut it. Dual core CPU with 2 gigs of ram is what I suggest. But I guess what people accept as "cutting it" varies.
 
I wouldn't plan on doing any intensive work on a system with 1 GB, especially something like gaming, even with XP at this point in time. For basic office type use, 1 GB would be perfectly fine for Vista.
 
Well with a new build like that it won't hurt going with the latest 64bit OS. Plus you'll get DX10 in the process.
 
garry26 said:
But...but...Vista is hell....
Or so i hear. They even made fun of it on late night.
Click to expand...
I know I always turn to late night when I make my tech choices! :p

Thats why people still use XP on their builds. I heard its a uses a lot of resources too
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It does use more resources, but in the way XP used more resources than win2k or win98. The real deal with Vista's resource use is that it manages it much differently than XP. In XP free memory is simply what is not currently being used. Under Vista that's not the case. There is what the system is using and then what Vista is managing. It proactively uses some of your RAM to cache frequently used apps to improve performance. This is how Vista manages to load commonly used apps quicker than XP.

There is no denying that XP does get better performance in most games, but, now that drivers have matured the performance benefit is extremely slight. 140FPS instead of 145FPS. 30FPS instead of 32FPS. The differences are that small. Small enough to make no real world difference.

Quite frankly, I recommend Vista 64 very highly. It has been a great platform for me.

That all said....
For RAM. This is my usual recommendation:

For basic uses: (Word processing, surfing, etc)
512MB min for XP, recommended 1GB. 512 is workable, but 1GB is noticeably better even for just general computing
1GB for Vista. I haven't tried it with less, but 1GB is perfectly acceptable for daily use.

For gamers:
2GB for Both XP and Vista. While you can game with 1GB, There is a noticeable performance hike when going to 2GB on both operating systems.

For new high end builds and multitaskers:
4GB+ and a 64bit OS. There is a noticeable difference when doing things like playing a MMO and opening other apps and browsers.

Based on your listed specs I do have some suggestions.

1. Do not go for the 8800GTS. You would be better off going for the 8800GT or 9800GT.
2. With 8GB of RAM Win XP home simply is not a good choice. You will be literally wasting your money on 4.5 GB of that ram since it would never get used. A 64bit OS is your only option to utilize that RAM and between XP64 and Vista64, Vista is hands down the better choice.
 
DeaconFrost said:
I wouldn't plan on doing any intensive work on a system with 1 GB, especially something like gaming, even with XP at this point in time. For basic office type use, 1 GB would be perfectly fine for Vista.
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I disagree from my experiences so i'll leave it at that. What's a perfectly fine experience for one person may be a bullshit experience for somebody else. I think Vista runs better with 2 gigs for basic use. If you're doing any intensive stuff(games, video editing, audio editing, etc...) on Vista you should have more than 2 gigs of ram. XP for basic use 1 gig is fine.
 
number69 said:
I think Vista runs better with 2 gigs for basic use.
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I think it runs better too, no kidding. No one will argue that. I had Vista Business x86 running on an older HP nc6000, and aside from having to jump through hoops to get the wireless working, it ran perfectly fine for everyday use, such as e-mail, office 2007 usage, presentations, etc. This isn't about what one considers acceptable and what one doesn't, so I'm not sure why it has to keep going back to that. As I said before, and will say again, if you were doing anything intensive, 2 GB would be the absolute minimum.

Would I want to use a system with VIsta and 1 GB of memory? No, that's why I put XP back on that system. If I only did the basics, I wouldn't have had an issue with that. More is always better, hands down.
 
DeaconFrost said:
I think it runs better too, no kidding. No one will argue that. I had Vista Business x86 running on an older HP nc6000, and aside from having to jump through hoops to get the wireless working, it ran perfectly fine for everyday use, such as e-mail, office 2007 usage, presentations, etc. This isn't about what one considers acceptable and what one doesn't, so I'm not sure why it has to keep going back to that. As I said before, and will say again, if you were doing anything intensive, 2 GB would be the absolute minimum.

Would I want to use a system with VIsta and 1 GB of memory? No, that's why I put XP back on that system. If I only did the basics, I wouldn't have had an issue with that. More is always better, hands down.
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Why do you keep going back to 1 gig being acceptable for basic use in Vista? Maybe because that's what you think is acceptable, I don't agree as do many others. What you think is fine may not be fine for others. Throw a AV on top of that running in the background and it's even worse.


Read my sig.
 
number69 said:
Why do you keep going back to 1 gig being acceptable for basic use in Vista? Maybe because that's what you think is acceptable, I don't agree as do many others. What you think is fine may not be fine for others. Throw a AV on top of that running in the background and it's even worse.


Read my sig.
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The Athlon 64 3000/1 GB RAM machine I mentioned earlier performs just fine as an office machine with AVG antivirus. Encoding a short video in Windows Movie Maker took about the same amount of time under both XP and Vista.
 
Domini said:
people dont like it because it doesn't offer much improvement over xp. it likes ME was to 98
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I wouldn't compare Vista to ME like a lot of people do; it's definitely not a terribly unreliable piece of crap. Although it would make more since if it were compared to Windows 98 compared to Windows 95. Back then they introduced usb support, fat32 support, and IE shell integration, all of which were eventually backported to 95 (mostly not done very well and usually via OSR releases).

With that logic in mind, I'm afraid that Windows 7 won't be an "improvement" to Vista, especially since Microsoft is focusing on releasing it as soon as possible (~2009-10) :(.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
The Athlon 64 3000/1 GB RAM machine I mentioned earlier performs just fine as an office machine with AVG antivirus. Encoding a short video in Windows Movie Maker took about the same amount of time under both XP and Vista.
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O.K.
 
GushpinBob said:
With that logic in mind, I'm afraid that Windows 7 won't be an "improvement" to Vista, especially since Microsoft is focusing on releasing it as soon as possible (~2009-10) :(.
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After Gate's "next year" slip up Microsoft came out and said Windows 7 will be arriving in 2010 at the earliest. It was on the front page.
 
I think with any OS the better the hardware the better your experience. Vista IMO needs better hardware(as mentioned c2d,c2d is the standard now anyway, more ram), that's not a slam it's the way it is, newer OS and all. There's a load of applications that you can do benches with all day long, my experience with Vista is what I mentioned earlier in the thread. I remember when 512mb of ram was the preferred amount for XP, as the years progressed 1 gig was considered preferable for basic stuff. Then of course the gamers went to 2 gigs for XP..blah, blah, blah. Now everybody wants 4 gigs on Vista for gaming. In a couple of years 4 gigs will seem light.
 
Your right, number69. I remember back when XP came out how a lot of people complained how it was a resource hog version of Windows 2000 and how 256 megabytes of RAM was the actual "sweet spot" (I remember using XP when came out and how the menus would slowly fade in and out). Over time, the cost of hardware came down and many people eventually bought cheap new machines that were expensive before. Now XP is where it is where 2000/98 use to be.

Vista will eventually come off as more favorable than XP, even though it will take another year or two. When 4GB of RAM and quad/octo-core CPUs become the mainstream many will think Vista will be the better choice over XP. We've seen the best of what Windows 98 and what Windows 2000 had to offer, but there's more and more powerful hardware coming on to the market that cannot be taken advantage with the two (i.e. the 512MB RAM 'limit' in 98).
 
XboxodX said:
I'd give Vista x64 a shot if you really want 4 or 8gb of ram, but if you really don't want Vista, go with XP Pro x64 Edition. I'm running it right now and it's the most stable OS i've ever used. The driver and software support is lacking slightly compared to its 32-bit brother, but so far it has been more stable than Vista ever was for me. Vista would bork itself for no reason with just normal usage while XP x64 is rock solid and no issues, for me, at least. If you want to pay for anti-virus software, go with NOD32. Very lightweight and very good at what it does. It's also pretty cheap.
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I'm of the opposite opinion. Windows XP x64 gave me frequent BSODs, likely due to unsupported hardware. Vista x64, on the other hand, was perfect.

If anything, I think XP x64 has less support because very few people use it.

I think with any OS the better the hardware the better your experience. Vista IMO needs better hardware(as mentioned c2d,c2d is the standard now anyway, more ram), that's not a slam it's the way it is, newer OS and all. There's a load of applications that you can do benches with all day long, my experience with Vista is what I mentioned earlier in the thread. I remember when 512mb of ram was the preferred amount for XP, as the years progressed 1 gig was considered preferable for basic stuff. Then of course the gamers went to 2 gigs for XP..blah, blah, blah. Now everybody wants 4 gigs on Vista for gaming. In a couple of years 4 gigs will seem light.
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Vista does not require a core 2 duo processor. Far from it.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
The Athlon 64 3000/1 GB RAM machine I mentioned earlier performs just fine as an office machine with AVG antivirus. Encoding a short video in Windows Movie Maker took about the same amount of time under both XP and Vista.
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Thank you....that's exactly the point I was trying to make.
number69 said:
Why do you keep going back to 1 gig being acceptable for basic use in Vista?
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Why must you keep arguing with it? Just because YOU don't feel it is acceptable, doesn't mean everyone else has to agree with you. If you really want to waste time debating on what is acceptable or not, I guess we could do that...but seriously...what's the point? If other people find it acceptable, why would you need to argue with that? No one is forcing you to use 1 GB on your system, right? Right?
 
DeaconFrost said:
Thank you....that's exactly the point I was trying to make.

Why must you keep arguing with it? Just because YOU don't feel it is acceptable, doesn't mean everyone else has to agree with you. If you really want to waste time debating on what is acceptable or not, I guess we could do that...but seriously...what's the point? If other people find it acceptable, why would you need to argue with that? No one is forcing you to use 1 GB on your system, right? Right?
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Stop crying. Nobody said Vista requires a dual core processor, I was correcting the above poster.

Secondly, nobody is arguing(funny that you use the word arguing by the way), maybe you're hoping for that since you seem to post in threads up and down this forum all day long. I don't care if somebody uses 1 gig for Vista...I had a different viewpoint on it. But this is a forum, people can have differing opinions..why must you keep arguing with it? Just because YOU feel what you believe is is acceptable doesn't mean everyone else has to agree with you.

If my opinion was the same as yours I have a feeling your responses would be more like.."yes, exactly, QFT"..or you wouldn't even post a response.
 
number69 said:
Secondly, nobody is arguing(funny that you use the word arguing by the way), maybe you're hoping for that since you seem to post in threads up and down this forum all day long. I don't care if somebody uses 1 gig for Vista...I had a different viewpoint on it. But this is a forum, people can have differing opinions..why must you keep arguing with it? Just because YOU feel what you believe is is acceptable doesn't mean everyone else has to agree with you.
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I'm glad you picked up on that. I was acting the same way as you, and apparently you've taken issue with it. That's exactly what I was hoping for...now maybe we can move on.

I do happen to post here quite a bit because I enjoy helping people out and enjoy taking part in discussions on different topics and common issues. It sharpens my skills as a system admin, and gives me a place to turn to when I could use some help.

As for the dual-core debate, you can put your quick-draw gun down with me, because that was a point someone else took issue with...not me. I actually agree on your side that a dual core proc is not required for Vista to run well, much the same way I feel about having 1 GB of system memory. Is a dual-core with 2+ GB of memory required for Vista to run well? Absolutely not, but it sure as hell would run better and handle more work if a system did.
 
DeaconFrost said:
I'm glad you picked up on that. I was acting the same way as you, and apparently you've taken issue with it. That's exactly what I was hoping for...now maybe we can move on.
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Actually I used your same words so you can see how ridiculous they are. You didn't pick up on that, instead in a moment of pomposity and grandeur you thought I was learning something from you.

I do happen to post here quite a bit because I enjoy helping people out and enjoy taking part in discussions on different topics and common issues. It sharpens my skills as a system admin, and gives me a place to turn to when I could use some help.
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Well it's good to help people so more power to you.

Also, a great way to throw in that you're a admin..which I guess implies what you have to say has more weight..it doesn't.

As for the dual-core debate, you can put your quick-draw gun down with me, because that was a point someone else took issue with...not me. I actually agree on your side that a dual core proc is not required for Vista to run well, much the same way I feel about having 1 GB of system memory. Is a dual-core with 2+ GB of memory required for Vista to run well? Absolutely not, but it sure as hell would run better and handle more work if a system did.
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We agree on something..hooray.

Either way in the end it doesn't matter, it's just computers.
 
number69 said:
Also, a great way to throw in that you're a admin..which I guess implies what you have to say has more weight..it doesn't.
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If you want to make that assumption be my guest....but you know what they say about assumptions.

I brought it up because you seemed to be saying I was trolling for arguments because I post often. Seems like you are doing that just now, aren't you? You're inventing something new to take issue with? :rolleyes: I think we've gone back and forth on this long enough. Heed your own advice....people form their own opinions....so remember that.
 
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