4GB and 32 Bit Vista Business

[Patrick]

We get a Vista Business machine with 4GB RAM installed.

As it is a 32 Bit OS, it is not able to access all 4GB RAM. Is there any
way / software to make the full use of the RAM we have ? A fellow suggests
setting up a RAM Disk. Is it reasonable ? If yes, is there any web site I
can find the information required ?

Thanks

 

[Richie Hardwick]

We get a Vista Business machine with 4GB RAM installed.

As it is a 32 Bit OS, it is not able to access all 4GB RAM. Is there any
way / software to make the full use of the RAM we have ? A fellow suggests
setting up a RAM Disk. Is it reasonable ? If yes, is there any web site I
can find the information required ?

What you see is all that you will get. There is NO way to change the
fact that your system is only left with about 3.2gigs of RAM after it
takes what it needs for basic projects.

Richie Hardwick

 

[Richard G. Harper]

What you see is what you get. All 32-bit OSes can only natively address 4gb
of memory, and in the Windows/Intel world some of that memory is re-mapped
for video display and adapter use, so you get about 3.2gb of useable memory.

I haven't heard anyone recommend the use of a RAM disk since the early DOS
and Windows days - I suppose you probably could set one up but what ever
would you use it for? I would recommend that you just leave well enough
alone, and use the system as it is. I can think of no truly
performance-enhancing way of recovering or using the "missing" memory.

 

[Ken Blake]

We get a Vista Business machine with 4GB RAM installed.

As it is a 32 Bit OS, it is not able to access all 4GB RAM.

Correct.


Is there any way / software to make the full use of the RAM we have ?

No.


A fellow suggests setting up a RAM Disk. Is it reasonable ?

No.


I explain why you can't use all 4GB below, but first let me ask why you want
to use it all. It depends on what apps you run, but for most people running
Vista, 4GB is considerably more than you can make effective use of, and
using more than the 3GB or so you can presently use won't help you at all.

All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) have a 4GB address
space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.

But you can't use the entire 4GB of 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. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no address space to
map it to.

 

[Steve Thackery]

As it is a 32 Bit OS, it is not able to access all 4GB RAM. Is there any

way / software to make the full use of the RAM we have ?

Don't worry, Patrick: you'll get great performance with 3.2G of accessible
RAM. Some people here recommend going to Vista 64, but you need to know two
things:

1/ It runs 32-bit apps slightly slower than native Vista 32

2/ You must make sure you've got solid 64-bit drivers for all your hardware

SteveT

 

[Kerry Brown]

1/ It runs 32-bit apps slightly slower than native Vista 32

I keep seeing people saying this. All the benchmark results I've seen are
inconclusive. The results varied and the differences weren't significant. In
real world use I see a slightly more responsive system with Vista x64 and
anything greater than 2 GB of RAM. The difference is slight but it is
noticeable. As you load more programs simultaneously the difference becomes
more pronounced. Even with 3 or 4 GB of RAM. Vista x64 is much more
responsive when multitasking.

 

[the wharf rat]

No.

Well, there's linux...

Lol

 

[Steve Thackery]

I keep seeing people saying this. All the benchmark results I've seen are

inconclusive.

I'm happy to take your word for it. I'm repeating what I've read in the
computer press.

SteveT

 

[John Barnes]

I agree with you. When multitasking with more than 2 gig there is a
noticeable difference. The following posting by Chuck Walbourn of Microsoft
offers an explanation of why.

---------

A 32-bit process can only adddress up to 2 GB of virtual address space. A
32-bit Large Address Aware process can get up to 4 GB of virtual address
space when run on Windows x64.

Each process has it's own unique address space. Every THREAD in that process
shares the same virtual address space.

Physical memory is managed by the operating system and will be mapped to
each process on demand. The mapping is completely up to the OS and is
dynamic, so there's no hard and firm rule here. If you are runnning a x64 OS
with 8 GB of physical RAM available, then the system will allocate it based
on the runtime demand. Multiple 32-bit processes running at the same time
can utilize more than 2 GB of physical memory.

To determine what is really happening you should look at your runtime
environment and determine how much viritual address space is allocated by
each process, and how large each working set is at runtime.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I'm happy to take your word for it. I'm repeating what I've read in the
computer press.

SteveT

I think many things come into play here. Early in Vista's life, 64 bit
drivers were hard to find and often buggy or slower than the the 32 bit
driver for the same hardware. A few early testers found that with some
benchmarks 32 bit was slightly faster than 64 bit. I think the poor drivers
contributed to this. I also think that few benchmarks simulate multi tasking
well. These early benchmark results have been repeated often enough on
various blogs that it has become an Internet "truth" that Vista x64 is
slower than Vista x86 when running 32 bit programs. My experience is that I
can't really notice any difference running single programs. As soon as I
start running multiple programs I find Vista more responsive. If the tasks
themselves are actually running any faster or slower I don't know. I suspect
some are faster, some are slower depending on how they are programmed. There
is a huge difference when you get up to around 8GB. Vista (and Linux) are
way nicer to use with that much RAM. Price wise more RAM and a 64 bit OS is
by far the best bang for the buck when upgrading a computer.

 

[Patrick]

Does the memory used by Video is included in the 3.2GB or it has been
allocated separately for the video card ?

Thanks

 

[Ken Blake]

Does the memory used by Video is included in the 3.2GB or it has been
allocated separately for the video card ?

I'm not completely sure I understand what you're asking, but if you have a
video card, it uses its own memory, and has nothing to do with the RAM
that's installed on the motherboard (although it does use part of the
address space). If, with 4GB of RAM, you get 3.2GB usable, the other .8GB is
reduced by address space usage taken by hardware such as the video card.

But if you have no video card, and instead use video support on the
motherboard, the amount of RAM that is uses reduces the amount that is
available to Windows. So if your RAM is 2GB and your motherboard video
support uses 128MB, your available RAM is 1920GMB.

And if your RAM is 4GB and your motherboard video support uses 128MB, your
available RAM starts out as 3968MB instead of 4GB, and that is then further
reduced by hardware taking some of the address space, as I explained below

 

[Tim Slattery]

We get a Vista Business machine with 4GB RAM installed.

As it is a 32 Bit OS, it is not able to access all 4GB RAM. Is there any
way / software to make the full use of the RAM we have ?
No.

A fellow suggests setting up a RAM Disk. Is it reasonable?

No, totally unreasonable. You'd be taking RAM that the OS and your
programs could otherwise use and hiding it from them.

 

[Tim Slattery]

Does the memory used by Video is included in the 3.2GB or it has been
allocated separately for the video card ?

Your video RAM is part of what keeps you from using all of your system
RAM. Your machine has a 4GB address space. That space must be used to
access video RAM, BIOS and a few other things besides system RAM.
Address space is allocated to video, BIOS and whatever else first,
what address space is left over can them be used for system RAM.

See http://members.cox.net/slatteryt/RAM.html