4 Gbyte RAM?

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Corsair's info for their 4 Gbyte RAM module TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX states
"Please note: Installing 4GB onto PCs with 32-bit operating systems is not
advised since 32-bit operating systems do not support 4GB of system memory.".

Is this true?

I have Windows 2000 Professional (all SP and updates) and want to install 4
Gbyte RAM. It's used as a high-performance workstation, single user.

I want to know exactly what RAM limitations exist and how, if possible, to
avoid or work around them.

Thanks,
Kjell
 
Kjell said:
Corsair's info for their 4 Gbyte RAM module TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX states
"Please note: Installing 4GB onto PCs with 32-bit operating systems is not
advised since 32-bit operating systems do not support 4GB of system memory.".

Is this true?

I have Windows 2000 Professional (all SP and updates) and want to install 4
Gbyte RAM. It's used as a high-performance workstation, single user.

I want to know exactly what RAM limitations exist and how, if possible, to
avoid or work around them.
Click to expand...

On most machines, due to the way they map memory and I/O devices, the
most RAM that 32-bit Windows can use is something like 3.2 GB. Anything
over that is wasted, but does no harm.
 
From other sources I am led to believe that Windows itself does use up to 4
Gbyte, but the HW/BIOS will reserve some RAM for its own usage, and thus will
not let Windows use it all.

In other words: all 4 Gbyte are put to good use in my system, but only about
3 Gbyte are used by Windows 2000. The rest is used for other stuff.

Is this a correct interpretation?

Many thanks,
Kjell
 
Not quite correct, Windows may "communicate" with 4GB of memory address
space. Some of the addresses in that space are used for hardware, the
physical "memory" at those "addresses" will be unused in the RAM you
install. If you remove "unnecessary" hardware, freeing up the address
areas, more physical RAM of the 4GB will be used.
 
i also have 4gb on my win2000.
initialy bios showed 3.05gb available, but when i replaced 512mb video card
with the weaker one, there now are 3.15gb ram available.

since i need as much as possible ram on this machine, and don't need special
video nor other hardware, is there some tool to display address space
distribution, to help me determine which part of h/w, or maybe some setting
on the mo-bo are using which memory segment.
knowing that, i could sacrifice some particular h/w component to achieve
*really* max usable memory footprint.

any advice about such a diagnostic/analysing tool?

thnx
 
Have you run MSinfo32 ? "Resources","Memory"
i also have 4gb on my win2000.
initialy bios showed 3.05gb available, but when i replaced 512mb video card
with the weaker one, there now are 3.15gb ram available.

since i need as much as possible ram on this machine, and don't need special
video nor other hardware, is there some tool to display address space
distribution, to help me determine which part of h/w, or maybe some setting
on the mo-bo are using which memory segment.
knowing that, i could sacrifice some particular h/w component to achieve
*really* max usable memory footprint.

any advice about such a diagnostic/analysing tool?

thnx
Click to expand...
 
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