A
Andy
I currently have 3 Gb of Ram with 32 bit XP Pro.
Will it recognize and use another Gb of Ram ?
Thanks.
Will it recognize and use another Gb of Ram ?
Thanks.
K
Ken Blake, MVP
It will use very little of it.
All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just XP/Vista/7/8) have a
4GB address space (64-bit versions can use much more). That's the
theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.
But you can't use the entire address space. Even though you have a
4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM. That's
because some of that space is used by hardware and is not available to
the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.
Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. If you have a greater amount of RAM, the rest of the RAM
goes unused because there is no address space to map it to.
B
Buffalo
P
Paul
Andy said:
In your current situation, that would be a waste of money.
If you're upgrading to another OS (64 bit), then the conversation
might be worth having.
3GB is plenty for where you are now.
And no, buying WinXP x64 is not worth it. If you check
customer reviews on Newegg, the customers aren't happy
with their purchase. Switching over, is not recommended.
Your 32 bit OS works a lot better, even if it can't
make good usage of a ton of RAM.
I currently have 8GB installed on WinXP XP3 x32. I have
"3GB free" in Task Manager. The fourth gigabyte is not
accessible in any case (even the RAMDisk won't touch it,
because it's not in the AWE space, and apparently they
can't get at it from PAE either). The other gigabytes
of RAM, can only be used at the driver level - and there
is a RAMDisk that makes usage of the RAM. So if I want,
I can have a small, blazing fast volatile storage media.
I only occasionally use that (I unzip tar balls into it).
I've actually turned it off, because it wasn't worth the trouble.
So everything above 3GB is purely a waste now, and not used.
(However, when I dual boot into Win8 x64, the RAM gets used.)
In terms of value for money, at the moment, the value is
pretty low. I could easily pull 4GB of that memory, and not
even notice in Win8 x64. Wouldn't make any difference. The
only thing that uses all the RAM on Win8, is CHKDSK
I've stopped playing with VirtualBox in Win8, and that's the
only other thing that makes use of that RAM.
If I forked out a lot of money for the latest x64 Adobe
stuff, upgraded to an x64 OS, then gobs of RAM might make sense.
About all it does for me today, is slow down the BIOS startup
at power up.
Paul
S
Stef
Andy said:
Short answer? No.
Stef
A
Andy
In your current situation, that would be a waste of money.
If you're upgrading to another OS (64 bit), then the conversation
might be worth having.
3GB is plenty for where you are now.
And no, buying WinXP x64 is not worth it. If you check
customer reviews on Newegg, the customers aren't happy
with their purchase. Switching over, is not recommended.
Your 32 bit OS works a lot better, even if it can't
make good usage of a ton of RAM.
I currently have 8GB installed on WinXP XP3 x32. I have
"3GB free" in Task Manager. The fourth gigabyte is not
accessible in any case (even the RAMDisk won't touch it,
because it's not in the AWE space, and apparently they
can't get at it from PAE either). The other gigabytes
of RAM, can only be used at the driver level - and there
is a RAMDisk that makes usage of the RAM. So if I want,
I can have a small, blazing fast volatile storage media.
I only occasionally use that (I unzip tar balls into it).
I've actually turned it off, because it wasn't worth the trouble.
So everything above 3GB is purely a waste now, and not used.
(However, when I dual boot into Win8 x64, the RAM gets used.)
In terms of value for money, at the moment, the value is
pretty low. I could easily pull 4GB of that memory, and not
even notice in Win8 x64. Wouldn't make any difference. The
only thing that uses all the RAM on Win8, is CHKDSK
I've stopped playing with VirtualBox in Win8, and that's the
only other thing that makes use of that RAM.
If I forked out a lot of money for the latest x64 Adobe
stuff, upgraded to an x64 OS, then gobs of RAM might make sense.
About all it does for me today, is slow down the BIOS startup
at power up.
Paul
Thanks.
I can't figure why Windows will occasionally use 400 Mb of the pagefile when there is still plenty of free available RAM.
I am surprised that a H.P. 6730b would have room for 8 Gb of RAM when only half could be used.
Looks like 64 bit processors aren't any faster in most cases than 32 bit.
Andy
P
Paul
Andy said:
The advertising material, "recommends" Vista for your machine
At least, that's what it says here. Maybe at the time, you could
have ordered it with a Vista 64 bit OS.
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/connecting/ds_bn_6730b.pdf
As to whether a 64 bit setup is faster, that depends on the code.
A GNU infinite precision math library, is 70% faster in 64 bit mode.
But lots of other stuff isn't like that. For things like simple loops,
where a counting variable might be contained in a 64 bit number, there
isn't going to be any speedup there. But if the program design
takes advantage of the width, there is a speedup.
Paul
T
Tim Slattery
If the machine can take that much RAM then it must be 64-bit hardware.
If you run a 64-bit OS on that machine, it will use all the RAM. Of
course the 32-bit version of the OS cannot take advantage of the
capabilities of the 64-bit hardware.