XP Home limits on RAM

  • Thread starter Thread starter Len
  • Start date Start date
Although Xp may allow up to 4gb of ram, that doesn't mean
that you need, or will benefit from that much. If you have
a memory hungry application (such as dv editing), that
requires huge amounts of memory, then fine. I believe that
the optimal amount of ram for xp is 1gb. In other words,
after 1gb, memory performance (access) starts taking a
hit, and may well result in slower system performance.
 
the optimal amount of ram for xp is 1gb. In other words,
after 1gb, memory performance (access) starts taking a
hit, and may well result in slower system performance.
Click to expand...

What basis do you have for this comment? This was true
with Windows 95/98/ME, but for NT-based operating systems
this is not accurate.

Your comment about not benefiting from huge amounts of
RAM is 100% correct, it depends on what people run.
However, I have yet to see any evidence that an abundance
of RAM will actually SLOW DOWN the machine. That's just
simply not true.
 
Len said:
What limits does XP Home have on the amount of RAM you can
use?
Click to expand...

The design limit is 4 gb. However at present it is probably
advisable to not go beyond 2 gb, at least not until more experience
has been gained with running Windows XP with huge amounts of RAM.

Note that adding more memory can noticeably improve performance if the
added memory results in reduced usage of the virtual memory paging
file. Therefore if the paging file is not being used to any
significant extent then adding more memory will not provide a
significant improvement.

This applies regardless of how much or how little RAM is currently
installed in the computer.

A free utility to measure how much of the paging file consists of
active memory pages that have been moved out from RAM can be
downloaded from http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_pagefilemon.htm or
from http://billsway.com/notes_public/WinXP_Tweaks/

If that utility shows more than 50 mb of actual paging file usage on a
consistent basis then that is evidence of a substantial amount of
actual paging activity and therefore adding more RAM is going to be
beneficial.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
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"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
Greetings --

4 Gb


Bruce Chambers

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