The system memory that is reported in the System Information dialog box in
Windows Vista is less than you expect if 4 GB of RAM is installed:
Vista 64bit supports 4GB, but depending on the motherboard you may only
see just over 3GB.
Thomas said:Hi
When I installed Vista 32-bit business, I had 2 Gb of RAM installed.
I installed an additional 2Gb of RAM and Vista still reports that I have 2
Gb RAM. The BOIS detects 4 Gb.
Any suggestions?
:t)homas
NoStop said:Thomas N. wrote:
Quit wasting your money trying to get Vista to be faster. It won't as it's a
p.o.s. bloated toy operating system that M$ threw together because its XP
was getting old.
Cheers.
I think 32bit Vista may have a 2GB limit.
Tim Slattery said:No, that's true of the 32-bit version. 64-bit Vista can handle up to
128GB of RAM (IIRC). I don't know of any motherboard that will handle
anywhere near that much.
--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(Shell/User)
(e-mail address removed)
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt
'Jeep' said:Isn't there a way to get 4G and above recognized in 32bit Vista using
PAE?
AJR said:Some clarification - Vista 32 bit supports max of 4 gig RAM - in a 4 gig
setup Vista reserves approx 1 gig and does not "show" the reservation.
Tim said:No. Vista does not support PAE. Some MS server operating systems do
support PAE.
Tim Slattery said:This is a hardware thing, not the Vista OS. Part of the 32GB address
space must be used to access video memory, PCIe cards, BIOS, etc.
Whatever is left over is used to access RAM. Sometimes it's only 3GB,
sometimes 3 and a quarter, sometimes 3.5. See
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt/RAM.html. The discussion applies to
Vista as well as XP.
Riffrafter said:On my Dell E521 I just installed 2 additional GB of RAM to take it to
4GB. Vista-32 home premium shows 3325MB. Your mileage may vary. Once
64-bit Vista shakes out the HW and device driver issues, I'll upgrade to
that (got it for $10 from MS - they just charge for the media if you own
32-bit Home Premium). In the meantime, RAM is cheap, so what the hell?
Best Buy is selling 2 matched 1GB sticks of PC5200 DDR2 RAM for $59 -
you can't go wrong.
-Riff
Just curious. I also have Dell E521 which has 2GB of RAM. Did you notice a
significant improvement in performance when you upgraded to 4GB?
Riffrafter said:Hey Norm,
No - not really. The E521 worked really well with 2GB and in my
unscientific opinion, I think 2 GB is probably the "sweet spot" for
Vista. However, with that said, when I've got a lot of productivity apps
loaded up, or when running some of the very resource intensive games
(like Bioshock, COD4, Crysis) it definitely does make a difference.
Biggest performance difference by far for me was upgrading my video
card. Recently installed the new Nvidia 8800 GT - Wow! Best performance
for the dollar card you can buy - period. And the best part is, it's
single slot, and works great with the Dell Stock 305W PSU (even though
the specs will say you shouldn't be able to run the card in your E521
with the stock PSU). Performance difference can be seen and felt in
standard 2-D apps too - not just gaming.
Hope that helps.
-Riff
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