Too much RAM?

[Brian V]

Ok, I have asked a similar question before. But my system can apparently take
4 1Mb Ram sticks in 4 slots. I know they are suppose to go in pairs.

What happens if I put in 2mb pieces? I know that XP 32-bit has a limit of
4Gb. From what I was told, in othe posts it seems, they just don't work if it
is too much. It's unrecognized. But I am just making sure.

In my motherboard manual it says 2Gb pieces can work. It lists one company
that has 2Gb pieces that work. I quickly scanned the list though.

On crucial.com, and www.oempcworld.com they say the 4 1Gb sticks. I trust
the manual (although there are features I have that are not included or
listed as optional).

Conflicting and confusing.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Ok, I have asked a similar question before. But my system can
apparently take 4 1Mb Ram sticks in 4 slots. I know they are
suppose to go in pairs.

What happens if I put in 2mb pieces? I know that XP 32-bit has a
limit of 4Gb. From what I was told, in othe posts it seems, they
just don't work if it is too much. It's unrecognized. But I am just
making sure.

In my motherboard manual it says 2Gb pieces can work. It lists one
company that has 2Gb pieces that work. I quickly scanned the list
though.

On crucial.com, and www.oempcworld.com they say the 4 1Gb sticks. I
trust the manual (although there are features I have that are not
included or listed as optional).

Conflicting and confusing.

Don't make it complicated.

It's not, not really.

Do you *need* or will you ever even use more than 2GB with Windows XP as a
regular home user? Not likely without virtual machines and/or some
video/music editing.

Does 32-bit Windows recognize more than 4GB memory - not really, in fact
very seldom will you hear about people even getting Windows (32-bit) to even
acknowledge in the simplest form more than 3.5GB. It depends on the
hardware configuration, etc.

If you want more RAM than that and will actually use it for something - get
a 64-bit OS.

As for your motherboard - trust what the Crucial web page tells you. They
guarantee it.

 

[Paul]

Ok, I have asked a similar question before. But my system can apparently take
4 1Mb Ram sticks in 4 slots. I know they are suppose to go in pairs.

What happens if I put in 2mb pieces? I know that XP 32-bit has a limit of
4Gb. From what I was told, in othe posts it seems, they just don't work if it
is too much. It's unrecognized. But I am just making sure.

In my motherboard manual it says 2Gb pieces can work. It lists one company
that has 2Gb pieces that work. I quickly scanned the list though.

On crucial.com, and www.oempcworld.com they say the 4 1Gb sticks. I trust
the manual (although there are features I have that are not included or
listed as optional).

Conflicting and confusing.

These are some test results for the E380. Documentation says up to 4x1GB
can be installed (and that recommendation is likely based on the assumption
a 32 bit OS will always be used). Yet, the test results here show BIOS
problems when more than 2GB total is installed.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic169530.html

It is perfectly OK for a person to do their own experiments. Take my current
computer as an example. It is rated to hold 2x1GB. I installed 2x1GB and the
machine is stable and error free. Based on some info from Germany, that it
was possible to install more memory, I bought 2x2GB and tried them, and they
worked! That is above the manufacturer's recommendation. Only problem is,
the memory operation is not error free (I test for that before using the memory
to boot the OS). So those 2x2GB sticks sit in my hardware junk pile. Nothing was
harmed by doing the experiment, except my bank account. Because memory was cheap
at the time, there was little harm to trying. If a person did not believe the
results in that bleepingcomputer thread, they could always test the limits
for themselves. The excess memory could always be sold on Ebay, for a loss.

Make sure *all* power to the computer is off, before changing memory
configuration.

With regard to the architecture of that motherboard and CPU choice, SIW
reports that based on the CPU installed, it could actually take up
to 4x4GB modules. But you'd need a 64 bit OS to get the value from
such an expenditure. And if the BIOS throws a wobbly because of the
RAM configuration, there isn't much that can be done about it. It is
up to the computer manufacturer to stay up-to-date on BIOS bug fixes.

http://www.fixya.com/support/t1201594-need_mainboard_em61sm_em61pm

I recommend more searches on "EM61SM/EM61PM" (the motherboard name),
to see how friendly that motherboard is to exceeding the original hardware
configuration (i.e. supporting hardware upgrades or surviving a BIOS flash
upgrade attempt). Any time a person takes it upon themselves to upgrade
hardware, no matter how experienced they are, they should read up on all
previous experiments done, to avoid grief or wasted expenditures.

At present, a 32 bit OS only benefits from 4GB installed, and may report
something like "3.2GB free" or less (depending on the address space
required by the graphics card and its chunk of onboard memory). Since
the Acer computer likely shipped with a 32 bit OS, that is one reason
to not go overboard.

The way this works, is the processor and OS have some limits as to the
address space supported. If you have 5GB worth of hardware addresses
and only 4GB worth of address space, the "excess hardware" must be
ignored. If you install 16GB of RAM, and the OS is WinXP 32 bit, then
expect to see "3.2GB free" reported. Same would happen if you installed
4GB of RAM - it would still report "3.2GB free". If you installed
3GB of RAM, it would report some number less than 3GB as free.

Out of the total address space, some is set aside to support the
addressing of system busses. Address space is allocated in 256MB chunks.
So if you installed a single PCI card, and it needed 4 bytes of address
space, a 256MB chunk would be allocated by the BIOS when it sets up
the decoding map. If the PCI card needed an address space of 256.1MB,
then the BIOS would allocate 512MB of address space for the bus. There
are at least two busses in the system, PCI and PCI Express. So at least
512MB of address space must be allocated just for them. That is how,
without too much effort, you're seeing "3.2GB free" on your computer
with 4x1GB installed. First, decoding space for buses is allocated, and
the remaining address space can be used to access memory.

It doesn't have to work that way, but it is the way Microsoft wants
it to work. PAE actually supports a 36 bit address space on a 32 bit OS.
But Microsoft has other ideas, and the current limit is 32 bits of address
space.

I find I could use more than 2GB of RAM, if I'm running virtual machines
on my PC. Otherwise, I find 2GB is enough for other purposes.

Paul

 

[Paul]

Don't make it complicated.

It's not, not really.

Do you *need* or will you ever even use more than 2GB with Windows XP as a
regular home user? Not likely without virtual machines and/or some
video/music editing.

Does 32-bit Windows recognize more than 4GB memory - not really, in fact
very seldom will you hear about people even getting Windows (32-bit) to even
acknowledge in the simplest form more than 3.5GB. It depends on the
hardware configuration, etc.

If you want more RAM than that and will actually use it for something - get
a 64-bit OS.

As for your motherboard - trust what the Crucial web page tells you. They
guarantee it.

I found this article the other day, and you might want to take a look at
what this guy has discovered. Not really a surprise, but still an interesting
read.

http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=notes/windows/license/memory.htm

Paul

 

[Brian V]

So this RAM allocation for the PCI cards: Would that cover all of them? Or
allocation per each? There's 4 in the back of my tower. Would 2 share this
allocation?

If I am not using what's in the Pci slots, is the RAM allocated to toher
stuff then? Or always set for the Pci slots?

What about if I installed MIDI to connect a keyboard to? It's probably going
in a PCI slot, but what if one was in a front port? Is that another situation
(the front ports)?

The mroe I deal with music, the mroe RAM I need because of editing and
multiple tracks being used at the same time. Tracks would be like running
multiple programs at once, the more there are, the more RAM used. What that
also means is each instrument or each sound assigned to a seperate field.
It's about editing afterwards. I am going to start those video editing
programs soon. I have one, just learning stuff about my computer first and
I'll start. Those files are big though.

Eg: ACVHD, BLu-Ray, Hi-def files, etc. They need 2.4Ghz or more. Quad core
or i7 for the really high resolution files. Ram is 1.5 at bare minimum,
mostly 2.5 recommended. Because there's processing, and graphics and sound.
RAM per each has been recommended to me. My video program is lesser than HD.
But hopefully by the end of this year, I am buying one of the HD ones.

 

[Paul]

So this RAM allocation for the PCI cards: Would that cover all of them? Or
allocation per each? There's 4 in the back of my tower. Would 2 share this
allocation?

If I am not using what's in the Pci slots, is the RAM allocated to toher
stuff then? Or always set for the Pci slots?

What about if I installed MIDI to connect a keyboard to? It's probably going
in a PCI slot, but what if one was in a front port? Is that another situation
(the front ports)?

The mroe I deal with music, the mroe RAM I need because of editing and
multiple tracks being used at the same time. Tracks would be like running
multiple programs at once, the more there are, the more RAM used. What that
also means is each instrument or each sound assigned to a seperate field.
It's about editing afterwards. I am going to start those video editing
programs soon. I have one, just learning stuff about my computer first and
I'll start. Those files are big though.

Eg: ACVHD, BLu-Ray, Hi-def files, etc. They need 2.4Ghz or more. Quad core
or i7 for the really high resolution files. Ram is 1.5 at bare minimum,
mostly 2.5 recommended. Because there's processing, and graphics and sound.
RAM per each has been recommended to me. My video program is lesser than HD.
But hopefully by the end of this year, I am buying one of the HD ones.

Not everything you do on the computer, is "all held in RAM".

For example, I recorded 2 hours of TV the other day, with a
WinTV BT878 based card. The resulting uncompressed file is
136GB. That is larger than the 2GB of RAM on my computer.
And yet, the program I used to edit it, had no problem handling
it. Because, it just goes to the disk, to get the clip needed
at the moment. Only a small portion of the 136GB is held in
RAM at any one time.

Sure, some programs have "hard" requirements, because they do
things in real time. For example, I agree that if you store
wave tables in RAM, for playing back a composition, it is best
if all the wave tables are pre-loaded. It would be difficult
for the disk to provide everything at just the right moment
(maybe an SSD disk could do that).

But for a lot of other things, the disk drive is used to advantage.
I'm sure lots of people do video editing, with between 1GB and
2GB of RAM and are quite happy with that. Since the video can
easily be larger than the RAM available on the computer, the
program already has the flexibility to use the hard drive
for source or destination.

To render the clip to the screen, the processor must be powerful enough
to convert the current video format, into a picture on the video card.
Some video cards have video acceleration features. So the job doesn't
always have to be done with the CPU, and there may be options to
do it with the GPU on the video card. There have even been video
editing hardware kits, with separate accelerator cards for that
kind of thing. So it doesn't always have to be done with the CPU.
And researching this topic is pretty hard. You cannot always determine
in advance, before buying your hardware, as to what resources your programs
will use. I find the "System Requirements" web page for most
software programs, to be poorly done and useless for planning.

Here are a couple of links, about video acceleration via the graphics card.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo

Paul

 

[Brian V]

Certain programs or certain processes in the programs in the music and or
video need enough RAM. Yes in some cases the msot is: It will be slow. But in
most cases there are hang-ups, crashed and freezes. So you waste lots of
time. Depending on the program, they all glitch no matter what you spend or
do on the program, hardware or computer. That is ok. You deal with it at Gb
RAM or infinite RAM. I agree with your point Paul.

But concerning the back ports: It was mentioned that a certain amount of RAM
can be allocated to the ports. Not what if I installed a MIDI connector back
there, or a graphics card with no onboard RAM, or more USB ports or
whatever..... Your saying this action of installing the hardware with no
onboard RAM takes RAM. Right? And if it wanted 259 Mb, it allocates 512Mb?

Now, what if the components are not in use? Is this allocation always
happening?

The other thing is - If I were to install RAM or any hardware in my
computer: how can I test it and not wreck my system? Just get into the BIOS
on start-up? (usually the delete key. It says something when I turn my
computer on). I also have installed Windows XP - SP3 in safe-mode once. Do I
go in there? Or just start-up like normal and if it works, it's ok? Would I
wreck my system if I just started it up? Or can I shut-it down, remove the
components and be ok if there's an error?

When I'v added something new, the detected new hardware message pops up. It
may not work and I have to download something or activate it in the control
panel somewhere.

 

[Brian V]

I'v read lots of the articles I keep getting given. Some I don't get yet, but
it's comming. But most I understand. I just need to apply it to ideas and ask
some questions in-case of trouble shooting.

I'd like to upgrade my system a little bit. Install the Vista upgrade
32-bit. Then get a 64-bit OS. Probably Vista first since this CPU can handle
it. Then Windows 7 with a brand new computer.

It's all learning. The more I know, the better system I can get for a
cheaper price. The more confident I am about the system, the better and
easier I can navigate to do something or not.

 

[Paul]

Certain programs or certain processes in the programs in the music and or
video need enough RAM. Yes in some cases the msot is: It will be slow. But in
most cases there are hang-ups, crashed and freezes. So you waste lots of
time. Depending on the program, they all glitch no matter what you spend or
do on the program, hardware or computer. That is ok. You deal with it at Gb
RAM or infinite RAM. I agree with your point Paul.

But concerning the back ports: It was mentioned that a certain amount of RAM
can be allocated to the ports. Not what if I installed a MIDI connector back
there, or a graphics card with no onboard RAM, or more USB ports or
whatever..... Your saying this action of installing the hardware with no
onboard RAM takes RAM. Right? And if it wanted 259 Mb, it allocates 512Mb?

Now, what if the components are not in use? Is this allocation always
happening?

The other thing is - If I were to install RAM or any hardware in my
computer: how can I test it and not wreck my system? Just get into the BIOS
on start-up? (usually the delete key. It says something when I turn my
computer on). I also have installed Windows XP - SP3 in safe-mode once. Do I
go in there? Or just start-up like normal and if it works, it's ok? Would I
wreck my system if I just started it up? Or can I shut-it down, remove the
components and be ok if there's an error?

When I'v added something new, the detected new hardware message pops up. It
may not work and I have to download something or activate it in the control
panel somewhere.

RAM should not offer any "new hardware" popups. It will silently be
added when it is installed.

RAM size is an ingredient in the Windows Activation formula. If you've made
too many changes to your hardware configuration recently, then WinXP may ask
to be reactivated. I've never added enough to this computer, to trigger
such a request, so I don't consider that to be an issue for you. But I have
to mention it anyway, in case you get such a response. I've had 2GB and 4GB
of memory plugged into my system, and nothing happened.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm

In terms of testing, get a copy of memtest86+ from memtest.org . For example,
I use the floppy version. The downloadable floppy installer, when you run it,
will prepare a blank floppy for you. You cannot list the contents of the
floppy after it is prepared, but rest assured, it is a bootable floppy
with a test program on it. You should test the floppy in advance,
using your existing RAM, to become more familiar with it. The test
would run forever, given the chance, but you can stop it after two
complete passes. Press the <esc> key to stop it. Two passes should take
no longer than a couple hours. There is a pass counter on the display
screen. I think Test 5 is more sensitive to RAM quality than the earlier tests,
so if errors are going to appear, you might see them during that test.

Using memtest86+ does not guarantee you won't have a problem when you
boot your copy of WinXP, but it is a good start to checking for
obviously bad RAM. It is still possible to have a subtle problem.
For that, you can use Prime95 from mersenne.org, once you're in
WinXP again, and that program is also a good test. The "stress test"
option is the one to use there. Prime95 detects problems, while
evaluating a math formula with a known answer, and since it
stores the intermediate results in the RAM, that is how
the quality of the RAM is checked for errors.

*******

I said the BIOS plans an address map for the system, when the system
starts at powerup. It is like planning a subdivision and laying out
streets. Not all the streets are filled with houses on the very first day.

The BIOS lays out a subdivision for your PCI bus and your PCI
Express bus. If you plug in cards into either of the buses, the
cards may need address space. A big card is plunking down a row
of adjoined town houses. That uses up a block of addresses.

The BIOS plans its subdivisions in chunks of 256MB. Once the
builders fill one subdivision with houses, if one extra house
is to be built, the BIOS allocates another 256MB chunk of
address space for it.

There is a difference between "address space" and "memory".
"Address space" is the plumbing that gives you access to
stuff. It is the streets and subdivisions. You need
streets and subdivisions, before you can have houses.
The "memory" is a house on that street. It stores stuff.

The BIOS gives priority in its planning, to the hardware buses
and PCI/PCI Express cards first. It gives what remains, until
4GB of addresses have been used, to the installed DIMMs
of system memory. Any excess RAM is "hoisted" above the
4GB address mark, but the WinXP 32 bit operating system won't go
looking up there. A 64 bit OS can look above the 4GB address
mark, as long as the physical hardware supports "hoisting"
and the address bus has enough bits to address all the installed
hardware.

HTH,
Paul