XP Home: more than 256kRAM a waste?

[Mike Smith]

Quick question: I was going to upgrade my RAM from 512k to
1gb on my XP Home machine and a friend claims that
anything more than 256kRAM is a waste because XP Home can
only use 256kRAM. He says I'll have to upgrade to XP Pro
to use any more RAM. Is that true?

Thanks...

 

[LVTravel]

It is not true. All flavors of XP can address up to 4 GB of RAM. The only
"waste would occur if you were not running multiple programs or large
programs which would need the addtional RAM. All of my computers, except
this laptop (256 MB) have at least 768 MB RAM and the one I use the most for
video editing now has 1 GB.

 

[Mike Smith]

Thanks for the detailed answer David. I followed most of
what you said but I'm still a little fuzzy on how much RAM
a typical program (such as MS Word or Warcraft) would use.

Bottom line: upgrading my RAM from 512k to 1gb will
improve performance of my XP Home machine, especially in
demanding situations, correct?

 

[David Jones]

Unfortunately, there's no hard and fast answer, the
amount of RAM a program uses is dependant on the program
itself.

In general in very demanding situations, upgrading from
512 MB to 1 GB will produce a performance increase, yes.
If you don't run lots of things at once, you may not see
that noticable an increase.

 

[LVTravel]

Mike, David did give very good answers to your questions.

Good job David.

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

Check your friends eyes...if they are brown then that confirms that he is
full of sh*t; If they are not brown it is because he is now a quart low
after the huge load he just gave you. windows can use up to 4GB of RAM; but
your mobo probably only supports 2GB or less.

Bobby

 

[PCyr]

PMSL - I may have to steal that. ;-)

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[Alex Nichol]

Quick question: I was going to upgrade my RAM from 512k to
1gb on my XP Home machine and a friend claims that
anything more than 256kRAM is a waste because XP Home can
only use 256kRAM. He says I'll have to upgrade to XP Pro
to use any more RAM. Is that true?

No it is not. The limitations of Home and Pro are identical in this
area. But that is not to say that the upgrade will do you any good.
That depends on the workload you impose on it, of *active* programs.
Read up at www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm and try the tool linked to find
how much page file you are actually using when you don't load things and
leave them parked in case they may be wanted. Unless there is
significant use (not just 20MB or so) adding RAM will do you no good