As far as I'm aware, Windows 2000 Professional doesn't support the
address space extensions needed to address over 4GB of RAM (up to
64GB).

At the moment, my computer has 3GB of physical RAM, a 512MB graphics
card, and I've set the computer's virtual memory to a maximum of 256MB.

Am I wastimg my time keeping that third gigabyte in there?

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> As far as I'm aware, Windows 2000 Professional doesn't support the
> address space extensions needed to address over 4GB of RAM (up to
> 64GB).
>
> At the moment, my computer has 3GB of physical RAM, a 512MB graphics
> card, and I've set the computer's virtual memory to a maximum of 256MB.
>
> Am I wastimg my time keeping that third gigabyte in there?
>

[It's been crossposted - I don't know which one is more applicable --
but I hate crossposting!]

I'd love to have that kind of memory.

Windows OS - for most people, hobbyists, geeks, nerds, and IT support
group would typically never exceed 1GB on a desktop system, and I
wouldn't know about a server system, but I wouldn't be surprised at 2-3
GB being routinely used.

What is the machine used as?

On 13 Aug 2006 15:31:18 -0700,
(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>As far as I'm aware, Windows 2000 Professional doesn't support the
>address space extensions needed to address over 4GB of RAM (up to
>64GB).
>
>At the moment, my computer has 3GB of physical RAM, a 512MB graphics
>card, and I've set the computer's virtual memory to a maximum of 256MB.
>
>Am I wastimg my time keeping that third gigabyte in there?

Depends on your application memory usage. But have you read and
followed the advice at

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system...AE/PAEmem.mspx

? If not then that third gig is likely not being used since an app can
only address a max of 2gig. So unless you have two very memory-hungry
apps running at once, you'll hardly touch it.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
"Heisenberg may have slept here"

On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 16:38:45 -0600, Tim Judd <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>I'd love to have that kind of memory.

At under £60 (or $60, no doubt) per gig stick, if you _need_ it then
it's affordable and will pay for itself in saved time.

I've got half that, and the top third rarely gets touched.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
Squawk! Pieces of Nine! Squawk! Pieces of Nine!
SYSTEM HALTED - PARROTTY ERROR.

Generally users requiring >1GB...
o Photoshop manipulating files of 400MB or greater
---- files re single image or a composite of several layers
---- 400MB re some filters requiring 2-3x file size in RAM
o Dbase server applications
---- RAM at least as large as the Index Key size
---- RAM as large as economic re users/dataset size

The move to 64-bit at the high end is as much to get the
high GB capability - RAM can be more critical than CPU.

HDs are very slow electromechanical devices...
o Very slow data transfer speed vs RAM -- MB/sec v GB/sec
o Very slow access time vs RAM -- msecs v nanosecs

The spread between HD-I/O & RAM is around 500.
The spread between a slow CPU & fast CPU is far less.

Peak Commit Charge gives a rough guide to RAM needs.
--
Dorothy Bradbury

Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:
> (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> >At the moment, my computer has 3GB of physical RAM, a 512MB graphics
> >card, and I've set the computer's virtual memory to a maximum of 256MB.
> >
> >Am I wastimg my time keeping that third gigabyte in there?
>
> Depends on your application memory usage. But have you read and
> followed the advice at
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system...AE/PAEmem.mspx

That's the bit I'm unsure about. The web page describes a maximum of
4GB of real memory and 2GB of virtual memory, plus presumably up to 1GB
for the latest graphics cards and a bit more for the other
memory-mapped peripherals.

Is all that additive, making a theoretical maximum of about 7.1GB in
Windows 2000 Professional, or does the addressable real and virtual
memory get cut back, to keep the total address space down to 4GB?

> ? If not then that third gig is likely not being used since an app can
> only address a max of 2gig. So unless you have two very memory-hungry
> apps running at once, you'll hardly touch it.

At the moment, I'm using it for transcoding MPEG-2 files to MPEG-4,
using two instances of a program called AutoGKnot on a dual core Athlon
64. (http://www.doom9.net is helpful when it comes to configuring
programs like this.)

I set up batches of 2TB of source data, and leave the computer running
unattended for about a month.

In article news:<(E-Mail Removed)>,
wrote:
> > http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system...AE/PAEmem.mspx
>
> That's the bit I'm unsure about. The web page describes a maximum of
> 4GB of real memory and 2GB of virtual memory, plus presumably up to 1GB
> for the latest graphics cards and a bit more for the other
> memory-mapped peripherals.

The physical memory limit of 4GB depends on the OS code and on the
processor/chipset architecture. Most motherboards for 32-but chips won't
support more than 4GB total memory addressable by the CPU.

Graphics chipsets that use the main PC memory will effectively reduce the
memory available by using some of that <4GB RAM. Memory on graphics cards
that have their own RAM does not count against this limit because it is not
mapped into the CPU's memory addressing space (or not all at once, anyway,
so the effect is small).

> Is all that additive, making a theoretical maximum of about 7.1GB in
> Windows 2000 Professional, or does the addressable real and virtual
> memory get cut back, to keep the total address space down to 4GB?

No, it's not additive. Standard Win2k Workstation allows 4GB of physical
memory. The 32-bit CPU has a 4GB address space, of which the OS makes half
(2GB) available for user processes and keeps the other half for the OS. The
addressing is virtual so each user process gets a separate 2GB address
space, but not its own 2GB of physical RAM.

4GB is the physical limit of most systems, but (as that Microsoft article
explains) the PAE (Physical Address Extension) capabilities of Pentium Pro
and later CPUs makes it possible to provide up to 36-bits (64GB) of
physical memory addressing. PAE requires chipset support which is only
normally found on server motherboards ... most workstation chipsets don't
support PAE and limit you to 4GB -- indeed, many 32-bit motherboards that
are capable of holding up to 4GB of RAM make significantly less available
because part of the addressing space of the chip is required for other
purposes.

It would help to know what your motherboard is ...?

In any case, there should be no problem using 3GB with Win2k ... it's just
that 4GB may but you less than you think (depending on how your
motherboard/chipset copes with it) and you can't use more than 4GB without
a server motherboard.

> At the moment, I'm using it for transcoding MPEG-2 files to MPEG-4,
> using two instances of a program called AutoGKnot on a dual core Athlon
> 64.

Ah, that's different. The physical limits are different on 64-bit systems
because the CPU has a greater addressing range (note that PAE isn't
supported on 64-bit chipsets because it isn't needed) -- as long as you are
running a 64-bit OS. I don't know whether a 32-bit OS can take advantage of
the greater addressing range of 64-bit CPUs in the same way that server
versions of Windows use PAE.

[much snipped]

Daniel James wrote:
> It would help to know what your motherboard is ...?

Asus AN8-SLI Deluxe.

I'm sticking with Windows 2000 for the time being, because there
doesn't seem to be a lot of point in buying Windows XP 64-bit
just yet, when Vista is about six months away from release.

The possibility that I'd upgrade to a 64-bit OS is what prompted
me to buy 3GB of RAM. PC3200 DDRAM is now about as cheap as it's
likely to get, because by this time next year, the economics of
scale will make DDRAM-2 cheap and DDRAM that bit more expensive.
(Compare the prices of new SDRAM with that of DDRAM.)

On 14 Aug 2006 00:10:12 -0700,
(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>> ? If not then that third gig is likely not being used since an app can
>> only address a max of 2gig. So unless you have two very memory-hungry
>> apps running at once, you'll hardly touch it.
>
>At the moment, I'm using it for transcoding MPEG-2 files to MPEG-4,
>using two instances of a program called AutoGKnot on a dual core Athlon
>64.

Not a program I'm familiar with, but previous transcoding experience
didn't show a great deal of memory use. So what sort of memory usage
do you get when doing that? Task Manager will reveal all...

For more detail, go to Processes tab, View/Select Columns, and pick
Memory Usage, Peak Memory Usage and Virtual Memory Size. Check out the
values for the AGK processes (it may spin them off as seperate divx
threads or whatever).

Cheers - Jaimie
--
On diving in UK waters:
'Sharp edges? Must be the wreck.'
'It's moving? Must be supper.'
'Too big to go in the goodie bag? Must be my buddy.' - nigelH, ukrs

Jaimie Vandenbergh wrote:
> (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> >At the moment, I'm using it for transcoding MPEG-2 files to MPEG-4,
> >using two instances of a program called AutoGKnot on a dual core
> >Athlon 64.
>
> So what sort of memory usage
> do you get when doing that? Task Manager will reveal all...

I'll have to check that later. I'm several counties away from my
dual-core computer, and I'm not going back for a couple of weeks.