Is 4 gigs overkill for Vista?

D

dreamer3kx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 28, 2007
Messages
453
Im running Vista with 2 gigs,Im thinking about getting 2 more gigs since the price on ram has dropped.What you guys think? Anybody running 4 gigs with Vista?
 
By no means is four gigs "overkill".. the more the better. However, you will need a 64bit version of Vista in order to use all four gigs....
 
2 gigs for XP
4 gigs for Vista, I think 4 gigs will be perfect for a vista gaming machine :D
 
If you are running vista 32, you will only get access to ~3-3.5gb of that ram, depending on your video cards memory size.

I would monitor your current ram usage, if you arent maxing out what you have, theres not much point in upgrading. Of course it's so cheap, theres not really any reason not to, as long as you know your motherboard can actually handle all 4 slots populated.
 
No, I am definitely missing those 2 GB of RAM right now. Going from 4 GB -> 2 GB definitely made my comp feel sluggish since I use some mem intensive progs.
 
4GB isn't overkill, but unless you're actually going to do something with that RAM (set up a RAM disk or if you do intensive video editing/CADD work) you don't need any more than that.
 
My 32bit vista home permium only recognises 3.5 gigs of my 4gig ram. I dont think I really need the little exrta bit enough to justify the expense of a new os.
 
maybe ill just pick up an extra 1 gig stick since vista wont read all 4 gigs(3.5gigs),that way it reads at 3 gigs,hows that?
 
dreamer3kx said:
maybe ill just pick up an extra 1 gig stick since vista wont read all 4 gigs(3.5gigs),that way it reads at 3 gigs,hows that?
Click to expand...

vista x64 will see al 4gb

vista x32 will never ever see over 3.5gb

if u have vista x64 then get 4gb
 
Dan_Allen said:
My 32bit vista home permium only recognises 3.5 gigs of my 4gig ram. I dont think I really need the little exrta bit enough to justify the expense of a new os.
Click to expand...

If you have a Vista Home Premium License all you need to do is ask Microsoft for the 64bit Media. Might run you ~$5 for shipping. ~$5 for Half a gig of accessible memory. Worth it!
 
I think you need 16GB for Vista. 8GB would be the bare minimum.
Click to expand...
I giggled when I saw his post. I assumed it was meant as a joke.
I'm running 4 gigs on Vista 64.
 
Dapperdan said:
why is that and where in vista does it show your only using 3.5?
Click to expand...

Look at your system properties to see how much memory the system reports it's seeing.

The maximum amount of addressable memory in 32-bit Vista is 3.5 GB, I believe the limit is built in. To be more generic, you will notice this address limit in all other 32-bit windows, and any system that uses memory mapped I/O.

For memory mapped I/O, the 32-bit address space is not just for physical RAM. It is used for addressing all the other devices in the system, including video cards, network controllers, audio devices, etc. If you have a video card with a ton of VRAM, that really eats into your addressable space. If you had a card with 1 GB video RAM, you'd lose 1 GB of addressable RAM range and you'd already be down to a 3 GB maximum for RAM.

Some reading bout this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929580
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/08/14/699521.aspx
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1035670
 
with 2 gigs my pc is alot slower because its always caching on the hard drive. with 4gigs, it almost never does.
 
I am running out of ram with the system in my sig. (4gigs) I will soon be going to 8. But I run several databases at once, plus I usually have a browser, music player, dvd decrypter, outlook, utorrent, and some file transfer going on as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top