jeff.burbank said:
I know this topic has been touched on several times before, but i was looking
for some fresh information.
I work in tech support for an Autodesk reseller. One of the products we
support is a RAM thirsty application called Revit. In one of our recent
support cases, Autodesk suggested that we have a client upgrade to 4GB of ram
and enable the 3GB Switch. i have been doing research into the 3GB switch,
and have been unable to determine what the effect of the 3GB switch is on
PHYSICAL memory, all the documentation i have found details what the 3GB
switch does for VIRTUAL memory.
So my question is two fold,
1. How does 32 Bit Windows handle 4GB of ram
Being that you posted in an XP group I will keep the information here as
it applies to 32-bit Windows XP. With 32-bit Server 2003 or Vista using
Physical Addressing Extensions (PAE) the way this is handled is different.
32-bit Windows can address a total of 4GB of memory, it cannot address
any memory above the 4GB barrier. Memory doesn't mean RAM specifically,
it means memory for everything in the computer. Video cards, PCI
devices and others also need memory addresses, they too must use
addresses below the 4GB barrier. If you add the requirements for all
the devices plus the requirements for the installed RAM, and if the
requirements exceeds 4GB, addressing space will be made available to
other devices before the RAM so there will not be enough addresses
remaining to fully supply the RAM addressing requirements. For example,
high end workstations using CAD/CAM software are usually equipped with
good video cards, lets say that the video card has 512MB of memory, the
address space requirements for the installed RAM and the video card is
4.5GB, Windows will take 512MB of address space at the top of the memory
range and reserve it for the video card, now there is only 3.5GB of
addressing left so you can only use 3.5 of the 4GB of installed RAM.
When you look at the reported memory figure in the System Properties you
will not see all of the installed RAM reported, you will see 3.5GB, you
will not be able to use the full 4GB of installed RAM. Keep in mind
that there is more than just the video card that needs reserved memory
addresses so the amount of usable RAM will vary, for most XP computers
it usually is anything between 2.75 to 3.5GB.
2. How does the 3GB switch effect the physical ram on a computer
It affect absolutely nothing with the "physical" RAM. It affects the
way Windows allocates "Virtual Memory Addresses". Once again, 32-bit
Windows can allocate a total of 4GB of "Virtual Address Space" (VAS is
not the same thing as discussed in #1 above). This virtual address
space is divided equally between user process and the operating system.
Each user process can make use of (its own) 2GB of Virtual Address
Space and the operating system can make use of the other 2GB. Using the
/3gb switch changes the way this is allocated. When using the switch
the operating system is limited to 1GB of virtual address space and user
processes can use 3GB. In order to use the increased address space the
applications must be LargeAddressAware, they must be written to use more
than the normal 2GB of virtual address space.
Hope that makes things a bit easier to understand.
John