Upgrading from 2 GB's to 4 GB's RAM in WinXP Pro

J

J.C. Scott

I'm running Windows XP Pro and I've currently got 2 sticks of Crucial 2GB
SDRAM DDR2 533 in my Intel 915P. From what I understand WinXP Pro can handle
4 GB's RAM. I purchased 2 more sticks of the same from Newegg today and I'm
wondering if anybody here has 4 GB's of RAM in a WinXP Pro box? From what I
understand there's a 3 GB limit on applications, unless the application was
specifically written to be able to utilize more. So my question is whether
it's complete overkill or if there are actually any advantages to maxing out
your RAM capabilities?
 
M

Mike Walsh

In the early days of 32 bit processing 2 GB of memory was restricted to system use and 2 GB was restricted to application use. I have read that with the right hardware and OS, 3 GB is now available for applications. There could also be other restrictions. I think there might still be a 2 GB limit for each application. You can probably get the details in a resource kit book. Since the most I use in any system is 1 GB I can't vouch for any of this. If you want to get around all of these restriction you can get a 64 bit system, where the only restriction would be how much the application is able to use.
 
J

J.C. Scott

I think you're right in that I should probably consider upgrading to Windows
XP Professional x64 Edition. After looking at Microsoft's site, it appears
to be a logical step. According to the x64 Edition information, you can
utilize up to 128 GB's.
 
M

Mike Walsh

You will of course need a 64 bit CPU and motherboard. With 64 bits you should be able to address many terabytes of memory. The current restriction is the capacity of motherboards.
 
J

J.C. Scott

I have the CPU (P4 with EM64,) however after reading some reviews of WinXP
Pro x64, I'm not so sure I really want to take the plunge now. It appears
the driver support is fairly sparse from what I understand.
 

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