On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:07:01 -0800, Scott Ehrlich <Scott
I have a new 32 GB quad-core PC that I plan to install WinXP 32-bit on.
Since WinXP 32-bit only utilizes 4 GB RAM, will the remaining 28 GB be
wasted, or can it somehow be utilized?
It will be wasted. Actually everything over something around 3.1GB
will be wasted. All 32-bit versions of Windows (Vista as well as XP),
even though they have a 4GB address space, can only use *around* 3.1GB
of RAM. That's because some of that space is used by hardware and not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but is
usually around 3.1GB.
However, note that even if 32-bit Windows *could* use that much RAM,
it's highly unlikely that your apps could make use of it. In fact,
even 3GB is substantially more than RAM than most people running
Windows XP can make effective use of. Chances are you would see no
performance difference between 1GB and 3GB, unless you do very
memory-hungry tasks, live editing large photographic images or videos.