What is the limit on the Virtual Memory address space?

[Guest]

Excel 2007 is limited to 2 Gigabytes of working set memory for the Excel
process under Windows XP. Can I break this limitation by installing more DDR
RAM into Motherboard? My computer currently install 2 GB DDR RAM. Does XP
have any limitation on the Virtual Memory address space?
Thank in advance for any suggestions
Eric

 

[Allan]

Excel 2007 is limited to 2 Gigabytes of working set memory for the Excel
process under Windows XP. Can I break this limitation by installing more
DDR
RAM into Motherboard? My computer currently install 2 GB DDR RAM. Does XP
have any limitation on the Virtual Memory address space?
Thank in advance for any suggestions
Eric

The limitation of the application (in this case, Excel) is fixed. You can
install more RAM which may help your overall system performance but cannot
overcome the limits imposed by the applications themselves. Two GB is
probably the limit for XP applications anyway.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The limitation of the application (in this case, Excel) is fixed.

Yes.


You can
install more RAM which may help your overall system performance

Highly unlikely. It's a very rare XP user who can make effective use
of that much memory.

 

[Jim]

Excel 2007 is limited to 2 Gigabytes of working set memory for the Excel
process under Windows XP. Can I break this limitation by installing more
DDR
RAM into Motherboard? My computer currently install 2 GB DDR RAM. Does XP
have any limitation on the Virtual Memory address space?
Thank in advance for any suggestions
Eric

2 to the thirty second power is the absolute max. That is close enough to
4GB. However, the normal installation reserves half of the virtual address
space for mapping of the operating system.
This leaves 2 GB for the user. You can increase the 2 GB to 3 GB with the
/3GB switch, but the application must be written to take advantage of this
switch.

Sorry, the amount of RAM has no effect on virtual address space. More RAM
will only reduce paging (which may make quite a difference in processing
speed).

If your spreadsheet needs more virtual address space than 2 GB, you should
be looking at a 64 bit processor.
Jim

 

[Tim Slattery]

The limitation of the application (in this case, Excel) is fixed. You can
install more RAM which may help your overall system performance but cannot
overcome the limits imposed by the applications themselves. Two GB is
probably the limit for XP applications anyway.

As Jim said, in 32-bit XP, apps are limited to 2GB or 3GB if you use
the "/3GB" switch (which starves the OS). In 64-bit XP with 64-bit
applications, the limit would be much higher but I don't know exactly
where.

 

[marc]

As Jim said, in 32-bit XP, apps are limited to 2GB or 3GB if you use
the "/3GB" switch (which starves the OS). In 64-bit XP with 64-bit
applications, the limit would be much higher but I don't know exactly
where.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)
(e-mail address removed)
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt

How does the '/3GB' switch starve the OS?

Marc

 

[Tim Slattery]

How does the '/3GB' switch starve the OS?

It restricts the OS to 1GB of virtual memory in each address space.
I'm sure that if MS thought that the OS could consistently run well in
that space they would have made it the default. Since they didn't, I
have to assume that 1GB really isn't quite enough for the OS.