I'm just wondering if anyone has a 1gb/2gb SLI etc video card system running on a 32bit OS. How much memory do you actually see as your system memory?
2gb video memory and win xp/vista 32-bit
- Thread starter nyker96
- Start date
That does pose a very interesting question...
3 x GTX 280's in tri SLI would be 3GB of total video memory...or even those completely absurd 2GB models of 9600GTs and 8800GTs...two of those in SLI would be 4GB of video memory...a 32bit OS is going to be completely out of the question as far as gaming goes within a year or two...
3 x GTX 280's in tri SLI would be 3GB of total video memory...or even those completely absurd 2GB models of 9600GTs and 8800GTs...two of those in SLI would be 4GB of video memory...a 32bit OS is going to be completely out of the question as far as gaming goes within a year or two...
32-bit will probably see all of it up to 4096mb; same size limit put on the swap file. I'm on Vista-32 and here's the printout from the Nvidia control panel:
The problem is that 32-bit can only see up to 4GB total. If you have 2GB of video memory being addressed, and if you also need 2+GB of system memory, you're going to be SOL...
You may be correct, but I have a hard time believing microsoft could screw up this badly. Their 32-bit server versions of windows were capable of more than 4gb of ram, but it would assign the memory as 4gb blocks. Vista, and probably XP, use a similar idea when making a page file bigger than 4gb. Right now I have 3200mb of ram (according to the bios itself), and I have 3 swap files (3 logical drives) that are 4gb each; Task Manager says my Page File is a maximum size of 15418mb.
So it's technically possible to have 4gb of system ram and 4gb of video ram, since that concept is already in place when using ram + swap file. The question is whether or not Windows uses that concept.
PAE is not working with Xp and Vista - its enabled only for server versions of Windows. PAE also have performance penalty and problems with drivers.
Only real option is 64bit OS.
How is it microsoft screwing up? Its a technical limitation of 32bit, the solution is 64bit. The hacks and loopholes to get 32bit OSes to use more than 4GB are nowhere near as good as what we can have in a 64bit environment. Besides, this isn't going to be a real problem until 32bit's end of life (at least for performance users). We not only need the hardware where we'd run into these problems, we'd also need the software that would demand large amounts of ram from both video and system.
I guess maybe they're screwing up if we go back to taltamir's comment about Vista should have never had a 32bit version...while I might not completely agree with that (as I'm sure there's a huge number of computers running decently fast Pentium 4s that have enough muscle to run Vista smoothly), I do wonder how many users are needlessly running a 32bit version of Vista on 64bit capable hardware...
I guess maybe they're screwing up if we go back to taltamir's comment about Vista should have never had a 32bit version...while I might not completely agree with that (as I'm sure there's a huge number of computers running decently fast Pentium 4s that have enough muscle to run Vista smoothly), I do wonder how many users are needlessly running a 32bit version of Vista on 64bit capable hardware...
The problem is that if you run a 32-bit application on a 64-bit operating system, it takes up significantly more memory than if you were to run the same program on a 32-bit OS. AFAIK it's close to a 50% increase in memory footprint. That in and of itself defeats the purpose of running a 64-bit OS for anyone with less than 4gb of ram IMO.
Microsoft is to blame here, just not for the reason taltamir suggests. Vista is a terrible piece of software whether it's run in 32-bit or 64-bit mode. XP-64 is also a horrible program. The lack of a reliable and efficient 64-bit operating system is holding most people back from jumping on the 64-bit bandwagon.
ViRGE
Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
- Oct 9, 1999
- 31,516
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That's on an OS level more than a program level. The OS does need to spend more memory to load 32bit libraries along side the 64bit libraries, but individual programs are no worse. Furthermore in my experience it's only a 25% increase in memory usage at most, so it's not as bad as 50%.
Besides, when RAM is $20/GB, I'm not sure it really matters at this point.
Anyhow, for the question at hand, it gets complex since some memory is replicated between the two cards and shares a single address. You're going to lose some address space (and as a result usable physical memory) but I don't think anyone here has the experience to know just how much it's going to be.
here comes the Vista FUD :roll:
if significantly more memory is being used for 32bit apps its because of superfetch (which would effect all apps, not just 32bit), which is going to make things faster
also the original point of topic is discussion of massive amounts of video ram, which means investing a lot of money into your system through expensive video cards, and everyone with a level head here would agree that other parts of the system should not be neglected if you're willing to spend that much on video cards, system RAM and OS should be included
This is just plain ridiculous. There's nothing any more wrong with Vista x64 than there is with x32. Even if your qualms with Vista were true, they'd more than likely be true of both versions, which goes back to my original question about how many are needlessly running 32bit Vista on 64bit hardware. I know there are a lot of system sellers that package 32bit Vista with newer hardware that is obviously capable of it, so in that case it isn't necessarily the user's fault, but I know there are also those (such as yourself) who have obvious misconceptions about 64bit and thus incorrectly fear the change.
if significantly more memory is being used for 32bit apps its because of superfetch (which would effect all apps, not just 32bit), which is going to make things faster
also the original point of topic is discussion of massive amounts of video ram, which means investing a lot of money into your system through expensive video cards, and everyone with a level head here would agree that other parts of the system should not be neglected if you're willing to spend that much on video cards, system RAM and OS should be included
This is just plain ridiculous. There's nothing any more wrong with Vista x64 than there is with x32. Even if your qualms with Vista were true, they'd more than likely be true of both versions, which goes back to my original question about how many are needlessly running 32bit Vista on 64bit hardware. I know there are a lot of system sellers that package 32bit Vista with newer hardware that is obviously capable of it, so in that case it isn't necessarily the user's fault, but I know there are also those (such as yourself) who have obvious misconceptions about 64bit and thus incorrectly fear the change.
You know what, I was going to respond to this but it's not even worth my time or effort. :thumbsdown:
The secret is that graphics memory isn't mapped into system address space in a 'flat' way.
Graphics cards typically map a 256- or 512-MByte aperture into system space, so that three cards cost you either .75 or 1.5 GiB of address space.
Graphics cards typically map a 256- or 512-MByte aperture into system space, so that three cards cost you either .75 or 1.5 GiB of address space.
Looks like so much interesting comments on this topic. So anyone running SLI/CF with 32bit actually has some numbers to show?
personally I only run a single 256mb card and my 32bit winxp only sees 3.4Mb running 4GB RAM.
personally I only run a single 256mb card and my 32bit winxp only sees 3.4Mb running 4GB RAM.
In a PCIE machine, almost half a gig of space is preoccupied by system essentials - so you can't actually expect to see more than 3.5G available RAM in 32-bit space, ever.
VirtualLarry
No Lifer
- Aug 25, 2001
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No, that's not true at all. For 32-bit apps marked LargeAddressAware, 64-bit OS allows the 32-bit app to have a whole 4GB of RAM.
It's only pure 64-bit apps that get bloated up to twice the size due to everything in the program changing from 32 bits to 64 bits -> double the size.
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