TOTAL RAM?

[penciline]

Dear Readers:

I was wondering why my XP Pro SP2 machine is only seeing 3.37 GB RAM when I
have 9GB RAM installed? I visited a computer manufacturer's website and it
lists configurations of up to 16GB RAM for a workstation. How is this
possible? And why can my workstation not see more than 4GB RAM?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
-=- penciline -=-

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Dear Readers:

I was wondering why my XP Pro SP2 machine is only seeing 3.37 GB RAM when I
have 9GB RAM installed? I visited a computer manufacturer's website and it
lists configurations of up to 16GB RAM for a workstation. How is this
possible? And why can my workstation not see more than 4GB RAM?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
-=- penciline -=-

As has been explained many, many times in these newsgroups, no 32-bit
operating system is capable of utilizing more than 4 GB of RAM, and part
of that will be reserved for memory addressing. What you're seeing is
exactly as expected.

To use more RAM, switch to a 64-bit operating system.

--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[Engel]

Hello penciline,

32-bit or 64-bit ?? the XP Pro

<http://members.cox.net/slatteryt/RAM.html>
-=-

 

[JS]

32 Bit OS is limited to 4GB memory (not all of which is available to Windows
XP)

If you are using XP 64Bit version
Check the boot.ini file for the /maxmem=

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Dear Readers:

I was wondering why my XP Pro SP2 machine is only seeing 3.37 GB RAM when
I
have 9GB RAM installed? I visited a computer manufacturer's website and
it
lists configurations of up to 16GB RAM for a workstation. How is this
possible? And why can my workstation not see more than 4GB RAM?

This is almost certainly because you are using the standard XP Pro version,
which is 32-bit, and like other 32-bit OS's it can't see or use any more
memory than what you are seeing.

On 32-bit installs of any OS, installing any more memory than 3 gig is
basically a waste, since the space between 3.37 and 4 gig is generally not
available for use - it's mapped to hardware.

To see more memory past what you see now, you have to use the 64-bit version
of XP Pro, which IIRC was only available as an OEM version, meaning included
with your system.

And then there's the issue of drivers, and that it is an issue, since there
aren't a lot of hardware with 64-bit XP drivers.

Vista is available in retail versions for both 32 and 64 bit versions, and
there is a lot more hardware and software support for 64-bit Vista than XP,
but you still have to be careful as not everything is supported.

Sometimes it's surprising what isn't supported on 64-bit platforms. For
example, you might think that DigiDesign ProTools, which can handle rather
large audio and video files, would support 64-bit Vista, but it doesn't.
Only 32-bit Vista Business and Ultimate are supported.

So the lesson is, you have to check *first*.

Sorry there isn't better news.

HTH
-pk

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I was wondering why my XP Pro SP2 machine is only seeing 3.37 GB RAM when I
have 9GB RAM installed? I visited a computer manufacturer's website and it
lists configurations of up to 16GB RAM for a workstation. How is this
possible? And why can my workstation not see more than 4GB RAM?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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. You, with 3.37GB, get a little more than average.

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.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Dear Readers:

I was wondering why my XP Pro SP2 machine is only seeing 3.37 GB
RAM when I have 9GB RAM installed? I visited a computer
manufacturer's website and it lists configurations of up to 16GB
RAM for a workstation. How is this possible? And why can my
workstation not see more than 4GB RAM?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You, like many other users, did little to no research before spending money.

If you want to access that much memory - you need the 64-bit version of the
OS.

So you don't have to research - you cannot *upgrade* to the 64-bit version
of whatever OS you have chosen. It will be a clean installation.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

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. You, with 3.37GB, get a little more than average.

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.

And let me add that it's *highly* unlikely that you would see any
improvement in performance if XP could see all your RAM. In fact, even
3.37 is probably way more than you can make effective use of. Unless
you run very memory-hungry applications, almost nobody will see any
improvement by having more than 512MB or 1GB.

 

[JS]

Yes but it's a common problem.

User's PC has slots 1 & 3 populated with 1GB memory sticks.
So user still want the small benefit of "Dual Channel" so
user buys two more 1GB sticks and hits the wall at 3.2GB.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I was wondering why my XP Pro SP2 machine is only seeing 3.37 GB
RAM when I have 9GB RAM installed? I visited a computer
manufacturer's website and it lists configurations of up to 16GB
RAM for a workstation. How is this possible? And why can my
workstation not see more than 4GB RAM?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You, like many other users, did little to no research before
spending money.
If you want to access that much memory - you need the 64-bit
version of the OS.

So you don't have to research - you cannot *upgrade* to the 64-bit
version of whatever OS you have chosen. It will be a clean
installation.

Yes but it's a common problem.

User's PC has slots 1 & 3 populated with 1GB memory sticks.
So user still want the small benefit of "Dual Channel" so
user buys two more 1GB sticks and hits the wall at 3.2GB.

While that may be 'common' (I don't think it is - at least it is not in my
experience. Most users only increase memory if they ask the advice of
someone about their computer seeming slow... and then they get the right
amount in most cases) - this post and your example have little in common
that I see.

This person installed 9GB memory. 9GB. I don't know what they are doing -
but not only is that a bizzare number, it is unlikely they will use it
without some virual machine usage on the machine itself - even with 64-bit
OSes. ;-)

 

[JS]

You may be correct in that it is not so common,
especially if they asked for advice.

But 9GB of memory, who gave them this advice???
Like you said it's a bazaar number.

 

[Paul]

You may be correct in that it is not so common,
especially if they asked for advice.

But 9GB of memory, who gave them this advice???
Like you said it's a bazaar number.

Take a Core i7 motherboard, which has three channels
and six DIMM slots. Install 1,1,1,2,2,2 and you get

9GB

It does make you wonder though, how stuff like this happens.

HTH,
Paul

 

[penciline]

--
-=- penciline -=-

Take a Core i7 motherboard, which has three channels
and six DIMM slots. Install 1,1,1,2,2,2 and you get

9GB

--My workstation came with 2 DIMM's of 512MB equalling 1GB RAM. I upgraded
by installing 2 kits of 2x2GB RAM (i.e. 4 DIMM's of 2GB) which is how I got
the 9GB odd number. I was hoping to maximize my usage of RAM and there was
nothing in my hardware documentation that said I could not do it. Also, on
that particular manufacturer's website that I mentionned it said you would
get OEM Vista Business and up to 16GB RAM on Dual AMD Opteron Processors. I
think in the customization pages it mentionned that you could get a certain
amount of RAM per processor.

I really appreciate everyone's input on this issue and I did not search
everywhere before making the RAM purchase, but I knew I needed to upgrade to
at least 2GB RAM for certain software installations to process. It was
recommended that I use 4GB and I thought into the future that maybe more RAM
would not hurt. But I see this was a waste of hardware and cash. (I read on
a msdn post that you could use /PAE switch in boot.ini to remove the glass
ceiling of the 4GB RAM limitation on XP). I will have to check out which of
my current software and hardware installations are supported under Vista
64-bit and the future Windows 7 (When will that be released?).

Thanks again.

-penciline

 

[JS]

I think there is still time to download the Windows 7 (64Bit) public beta
and activate.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx

If you choose to do so, install Windows 7 on a separate hard drive
with your current hard disk disconnected.

This way you will not accidentally overwrite your existing OS
and or get stuck in the Dual Boot trap.

With 7 64bit you should be able to test at least some things
and also see how well 9GB of ram helps the OS.

 

[Paul]

--My workstation came with 2 DIMM's of 512MB equalling 1GB RAM. I upgraded
by installing 2 kits of 2x2GB RAM (i.e. 4 DIMM's of 2GB) which is how I got
the 9GB odd number. I was hoping to maximize my usage of RAM and there was
nothing in my hardware documentation that said I could not do it. Also, on
that particular manufacturer's website that I mentionned it said you would
get OEM Vista Business and up to 16GB RAM on Dual AMD Opteron Processors. I
think in the customization pages it mentionned that you could get a certain
amount of RAM per processor.

I really appreciate everyone's input on this issue and I did not search
everywhere before making the RAM purchase, but I knew I needed to upgrade to
at least 2GB RAM for certain software installations to process. It was
recommended that I use 4GB and I thought into the future that maybe more RAM
would not hurt. But I see this was a waste of hardware and cash. (I read on
a msdn post that you could use /PAE switch in boot.ini to remove the glass
ceiling of the 4GB RAM limitation on XP). I will have to check out which of
my current software and hardware installations are supported under Vista
64-bit and the future Windows 7 (When will that be released?).

Thanks again.

-penciline

If you intend to keep the memory you purchased (even if
WinXP x32 cannot use all of it), you can install it like
this. Remove the 2x512MB, and only use the four 2GB sticks.

---- 2GB
CPU0
---- 2GB

---- 2GB
CPU1
---- 2GB

The CPUs are dual channel, and so it is best if each
CPU has two sticks of memory, one on each channel. That
gives good memory bandwidth on each processor. The
memory slots to use, may be color coded to make it
easier to install them the right way (so they end
up in dual channel mode).

The 2x512MB should be removed, because, depending on
the generation of processor used, the automatic
memory settings may end up being slower if there are
extra modules on each channel. In the grand scheme of
things, it probably doesn't make that much difference,
but should give you closer to what the equipment is
capable of.

There is an article here, with some background on your
architecture choice.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/cpu/rmma-numa.html

Paul

 

[John John (MVP)]

I really appreciate everyone's input on this issue and I did not search
everywhere before making the RAM purchase, but I knew I needed to upgrade to
at least 2GB RAM for certain software installations to process. It was
recommended that I use 4GB and I thought into the future that maybe more RAM
would not hurt. But I see this was a waste of hardware and cash. (I read on
a msdn post that you could use /PAE switch in boot.ini to remove the glass
ceiling of the 4GB RAM limitation on XP).

The /PAE switch will not change things, it will not allow Windows XP to
see or use more than 4GB of RAM, this only works on 32-bit Server versions.

John

 

[dennis]

The /PAE switch will not change things, it will not allow Windows XP to
see or use more than 4GB of RAM, this only works on 32-bit Server versions.

A little note to that: dep is enabled by default on xp/sp2, which
automatically enables pae. So many people already has it enabled even
without the /pae switch.

 

[HeyBub]

Dear Readers:

I was wondering why my XP Pro SP2 machine is only seeing 3.37 GB RAM
when I have 9GB RAM installed? I visited a computer manufacturer's
website and it lists configurations of up to 16GB RAM for a
workstation. How is this possible? And why can my workstation not
see more than 4GB RAM?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

32 bits = 4,294,967,295

32 bits of addressable RAM = 4 Gig.

Your OS can't access more than than unless some bits have roommates.

 

[dennis]

32 bits = 4,294,967,295

32 bits of addressable RAM = 4 Gig.

Your OS can't access more than than unless some bits have roommates.

I think he was misinformed about pae in another forum. Technically, pae
gives access to much more than 4GB, but Microsoft has programmed a
limitation into the kernel.

 

[Tim Slattery]

Dear Readers:

I was wondering why my XP Pro SP2 machine is only seeing 3.37 GB RAM when I
have 9GB RAM installed? I visited a computer manufacturer's website and it
lists configurations of up to 16GB RAM for a workstation. How is this
possible? And why can my workstation not see more than 4GB RAM?

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