Vista32bit & 4Gb ram

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tony

Yet again, a major rewrite of Vista and still no support for 4Gb ram as
was promised in pre-release of Vista blurb years ago.....
Tony
 
32 Bit vista or any windows 32 bit will never support 4 gigs of ram!!..It is
and has always been a limitation of a 32 bit system.( as far as every post
or article I have seen) After sp1 your computer probably showed 4 gigs under
the w.e.I but the bios would or did only show "around" 3.2 to 3.5 gigs. If
you wish to take advantage of 4 gigs or more then you need to switch to
(clean install) a 64 bit system. A lot of people do not need to use more
than 2 or 3 gigs in everyday use unless they do a lot of extensive video
editing with large files that require more horsepower. I also highly doubt
that someone would say that vista 32 bit would ever support 4gigs or more
and if they did I am not sure I would trust them to work on mine!.. 64 bit
is not being fully utilized yet (software not really written a lot) but when
it is I am sure it will be waaaay faster than 32 bit anyways.... Just my 3
cents
 
tony said:
Yet again, a major rewrite of Vista and still no support for 4Gb ram as
was promised in pre-release of Vista blurb years ago.....
Tony
Click to expand...

You're just misunderstanding the situation. A 32 Bit OS can only access a
maximum of 4GB memory. Vista 32bit version can access a maximum of 4Gb of
memory too but that memory does not equate to only user RAM. A portion of
that total memory space is required for all the assorted hardware installed
in the computer, including graphics card memory. The amount required can
vary from system to system. IOW any memory space required by the hardware
(eg. 512MB installed on a video card) takes up a portion of the total
4Gbytes of memory that Vista can access and only the remainder that is left
over can be used for RAM memory. With 4GB of RAM installed and a 128MB video
card you might be able to use 3.2 to 3.5 GB of the RAM but if you put in a
graphics card or SLI combo with 1GB of video memory your usable RAM would be
reduced to something less than 3GB.
 
Tony,
You are right....
I have a ASUS motherboard with 4GB installed, and my Windows Vista Ultimate
SP1 display that I have 4GB on system propriety. But it isn't true, because
on BIOS, i can see that I have 4GB and the system will use just 3.2GB.
 
You've got the same misunderstanding - that apparently missing 0.8GB of
memory address space is memory space that reserved by the operating system
for running hardware installed in your computer. The same 0.8GB memory
addresses cannot also be used for RAM at the same time but it does
constitute a portion of the 4GB total memory that Vista 32bit can access
(4GB maximum memory, not 4GB RAM memory +another 0.8GB memory for hardware).

See also: http://members.cox.net/slatteryt/RAM.html
 
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