Anyone ever use more than 2 GBs of RAM on their XP 32-bit Machine?

[Steaksauce]

My computer guy and I are having a duel about this subject on whether or not we ever use more than 2 gigs of RAM. If any of you ever use more than 2 gigs on a XP system, please tell me what set of program(s) you are using to get over that hump.

Quick Way to check: Task Manager> Performance> Available Memory is the memory just sitting there.

This is not a question of whether or not you have over 2 gigs of RAM installed in your machine, this is a question of whether or not you use the RAM that you have installed.

I believe on a XP machine, anything more than 2 gigs is a waste of money, unless you know for a fact a set of programs or programs uses that much.

 

[Nothinman]

Of course you do, even if you don't run a single application that uses it (which is impossible in Windows without jumping through a few hoops anyway) the memory will be used by the filesystem cache.

 

[ghelli]

I was wondering the same thing as I was just about to purchase another set of 2x1g crucial ballistix for my current xp system. My friend has done this, using 4g ram on an xp system and while it only recognizes 3.4 or 3.6g and not the whole 4g, I don't believe he uses any program to do this. Looking forward to some answers with you Steaksauce.

 

[Steaksauce]

The most RAM usage I've seen on my system BEING USED is like 1.2GBs when I was playing the game, Prey. I've tried to open up few dozens of Photoshop and firefox pages, but that really doesn't budge the RAM usage.

Nothinman, please explain further.

 

[Lorne]

If you shift screens to the desktop or any other program other then the memory hog doesnt it page off most info to give priority to the front program?, Therefore freeing up ram for the forground application and not showing total usage in Taskmanager.

 

[Rubycon]

Text

Ok technically 64bit. That's still paging a LOT!

Before SP2 you could add /pae in your boot.ini and 32bit xp would show all 4GB. No application could use more than 2GB, however. And you know what with 64 bit it's the same way unless your programs are actually 64bit. Not many are. Adobe really needs a 64bit version of photoshop!

 

[JustaGeek]

Quake 4 on Ultra High Quality settings uses over 72% of RAM on my computer with 3GB of RAM installed. That translates to ~2.18GB of RAM used (Logitech G15 keyboard RAM meter).

Same with STALKER.

EDIT: All that in XP x86, not in Vista x64.

 

[andrei3333]

well the same quake 4 on my 32bit xp with 2gb fast ram and on ultra quality i have no slowdowns what so ever, i push it with 4xAA though but at 2xAA its perfect

 

[JustaGeek]

I had a "stuttering" problem - it disappeared when I added more RAM, for a total of 3GB.

It obviously depends on other programs running - I use Norton, with rather large footprint.

But it would go beyond 2GB on my machine.

 

[Steaksauce]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
Quake 4 on Ultra High Quality settings uses over 72% of RAM on my computer with 3GB of RAM installed. That translates to ~2.18GB of RAM used (Logitech G15 keyboard RAM meter).

Same with STALKER.

EDIT: All that in XP x86, not in Vista x64.

Really? On Quake 4? I wouldn't think Q4 is that RAM intense compared to, say, Crysis.

How are you measuring the RAM usage during game play?

I usually play the game on one screen and the other screen would display the task manager.

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: Steaksauce

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
Quake 4 on Ultra High Quality settings uses over 72% of RAM on my computer with 3GB of RAM installed. That translates to ~2.18GB of RAM used (Logitech G15 keyboard RAM meter).

Same with STALKER.

EDIT: All that in XP x86, not in Vista x64.

Really? On Quake 4? I wouldn't think Q4 is that RAM intense compared to, say, Crysis.

How are you measuring the RAM usage during game play?

I usually play the game on one screen and the other screen would display the task manager.

Logitech G15 keyboard has a RAM/CPU usage meter.