As the title really. I have a motherboard capable of running 3GB of RAM and
was thinking of installing 3GB to max out the board and give me chance to
try out Vista shortly. But in the meantime, will this work OK in Windows XP
Pro? Can XP handle 3GB od RAM ok?
Yes it can. But will that much RAM improve Windows XP's performance?
The answer depends on what apps you run, but the answer is very likely
no, and that it will provide no additional performance over what apps
you run. Here's my standard post on this subject:
How much RAM you need for good performance is *not* a
one-size-fits-all situation. You get good performance if the amount of
RAM you have keeps you from using the page file, and that depends on
what apps you run. Most people running a typical range of business
applications find that somewhere around 256-384MB works well, others
need 512MB. Almost anyone will see poor performance with less than
256MB. Some people, particularly those doing things like editing large
photographic images, can see a performance boost by adding even more
than 512MB--sometimes much more.
If you are currently using the page file significantly, more memory
will decrease or eliminate that usage, and improve your performance.
If you are not using the page file significantly, more memory will do
nothing for you. Go to
http://billsway.com/notes_public/winxp_tweaks/ and download
WinXP-2K_Pagefile.zip and monitor your pagefile usage. That should
give you a good idea of whether more memory can help, and if so, how
much more.
Also bear in mind one additional point: how much RAM can be used (in
either XP or Vista) depends on your hardware configuration. Most
computers can use a little more than 3GB, but bear in mind that
there's a slight possibility that yours will not.
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 too.
