Can any Windows 32 bit OS support 4 gigs or more of memory?

[chess9]

Doesn't Windows XP only support 3.x gigs of ram? Or do some flavors support more?

Should I go with a dual boot Win Vista 64/Win XP32? Or, what?

Are there enough 64 bit apps out now to make 64 bit worthwhile?

She has a lappy, and this is a gaming computer.

Asus PQ5 motherboard, Intel Q9***, 8 (?) gigs of DDR2 (not 3?).

-Robert

 

[zerogear]

Honestly, running Vista x64 is just like running Vista x86. It supports almost everything you throw at it, maybe except 16-bit games. You really don't need to worry about 64-bit applications and such as the windows on windows (WoW86) fully supports 32-bit. The only problem you might run into is if the drivers aren't certified and signed, in which you'll need to do F8-> Run unsigned drivers. This was enable to ensure stability of x64 system, so its probably best to keep it.

 

[chess9]

Originally posted by: zerogear
Honestly, running Vista x64 is just like running Vista x86. It supports almost everything you throw at it, maybe except 16-bit games. You really don't need to worry about 64-bit applications and such as the windows on windows (WoW86) fully supports 32-bit. The only problem you might run into is if the drivers aren't certified and signed, in which you'll need to do F8-> Run unsigned drivers. This was enable to ensure stability of x64 system, so its probably best to keep it.

Great! So, just load Win Vista 64 and run with it? Does it address at least 8 gigs of ram?

Many thanks!

-Robert

 

[Billb2]

Address, see or use? Those are all different terms.
Practically, you won't see much difference between 2 x 1 gig and 4 x 2 gigs.

 

[chess9]

Originally posted by: Billb2
Address, see or use? Those are all different terms.
Practically, you won't see much difference between 2 x 1 gig and 4 x 2 gigs.

Yes, address. Sorry, mate.

So, you think 8 gigs is a waste of 6 gigs of memory?

I've got two gigs in my Vista laptop and it is dog slow and is always running out of memory.

-Robert

 

[CurseTheSky]

I'm running Vista x64 with 4 Gigs. Playing games (with everything loaded in the background) it's using ~2-2.5 GB. With that said, memory is cheap. I'd get a 2x2GB kit if you're going with a x64 OS.

As others said, MOST 32-bit applications work just fine. You'll actually see them installed in C:\Program Files (x86). Out of everything I've installed, only two programs have given me trouble... the 64-bit version of Ventrilo (32 bit works fine), and nVidia's nTune (BSOD as soon as I open the program).

 

[zerogear]

Originally posted by: chess9

Originally posted by: Billb2
Address, see or use? Those are all different terms.
Practically, you won't see much difference between 2 x 1 gig and 4 x 2 gigs.

Yes, address. Sorry, mate.

So, you think 8 gigs is a waste of 6 gigs of memory?

I've got two gigs in my Vista laptop and it is dog slow and is always running out of memory.

-Robert

I would go with 4GB unless you are video editing or photo editing (huge resolutions). If you are, then go with 8GB.

The main reason why you'd want more RAM is because of Vista's Superfetch. SuperFetch analyzes your program usage and pre-caches these programs to make them load faster. This usually does well for most users who have programs they want to execute, but it takes a lot of RAM, about 50% most of the time for Vista (I have 8GB, with Superfetch, RAM usage hovers around 3-4GB, and goes to 6-7GB when I am doing video editing).

Superfetch, while useful for regular programs it is fairly useless to gamers, as gamers would need more 'free ram' in order to load game files. In the end, its really a toss-up to what you want. Personally, I think free ram is wasted ram best to use it all up.

 

[chess9]

Originally posted by: zerogear

Originally posted by: chess9

Originally posted by: Billb2
Address, see or use? Those are all different terms.
Practically, you won't see much difference between 2 x 1 gig and 4 x 2 gigs.

Yes, address. Sorry, mate.

So, you think 8 gigs is a waste of 6 gigs of memory?

I've got two gigs in my Vista laptop and it is dog slow and is always running out of memory.

-Robert

I would go with 4GB unless you are video editing or photo editing (huge resolutions). If you are, then go with 8GB.

Ok. THanks guys. You've been very helpful, as usual.

-Robert

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Just an FYI, 64-bit OSes can use somewhere around 1 exabyte of RAM. Or maybe it was only a couple terabytes... Either way.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte
Just an FYI, 64-bit OSes can use somewhere around 1 exabyte of RAM. Or maybe it was only a couple terabytes... Either way.

Microsoft caps the limit at what it can actually test, which is 2TB for the current OS cycle, in addition to arbitrary caps that it imposes for product segmentation reasons (i.e. marketing). Most 64-bit non-server and non-enterprise SKUs are supporting not more than 128GB. e.g. Vista Home Premium 64-bit is capped at 16GB.

 

[chess9]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte
Just an FYI, 64-bit OSes can use somewhere around 1 exabyte of RAM. Or maybe it was only a couple terabytes... Either way.

Microsoft caps the limit at what it can actually test, which is 2TB for the current OS cycle, in addition to arbitrary caps that it imposes for product segmentation reasons (i.e. marketing). Most 64-bit non-server and non-enterprise SKUs are supporting not more than 128GB. e.g. Vista Home Premium 64-bit is capped at 16GB.

This suggests another question I have. Is Windows XP Pro 64 more stable than Vista 64? I assume that it will also support 16 gb?

Interesting thread. Well, it is to ME!

-Robert

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte
Just an FYI, 64-bit OSes can use somewhere around 1 exabyte of RAM. Or maybe it was only a couple terabytes... Either way.

Microsoft caps the limit at what it can actually test, which is 2TB for the current OS cycle, in addition to arbitrary caps that it imposes for product segmentation reasons (i.e. marketing). Most 64-bit non-server and non-enterprise SKUs are supporting not more than 128GB. e.g. Vista Home Premium 64-bit is capped at 16GB.

We will find out how smart that was, when Nehalem tri-channel DDR3 rigs start showing up with more RAM. I think people will be upset to find out that their OS is arbitrarily limiting how much RAM they can use, just like Windows 95 did back in the day.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: tcsenter

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte
Just an FYI, 64-bit OSes can use somewhere around 1 exabyte of RAM. Or maybe it was only a couple terabytes... Either way.

Microsoft caps the limit at what it can actually test, which is 2TB for the current OS cycle, in addition to arbitrary caps that it imposes for product segmentation reasons (i.e. marketing). Most 64-bit non-server and non-enterprise SKUs are supporting not more than 128GB. e.g. Vista Home Premium 64-bit is capped at 16GB.

We will find out how smart that was, when Nehalem tri-channel DDR3 rigs start showing up with more RAM. I think people will be upset to find out that their OS is arbitrarily limiting how much RAM they can use, just like Windows 95 did back in the day.

Given the choices such a consumer has upon discovering this arbitrary limitation, I suspect Microsoft will not give a crap when the customer is forced to upgrade to vista ultimate or opt to go for linux.

Monopolies are not good for the consumer for a reason. We'll all find out in due time what manner of arbitrary limitations our Intel CPU's are going to embrace when AMD whithers.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
We will find out how smart that was, when Nehalem tri-channel DDR3 rigs start showing up with more RAM. I think people will be upset to find out that their OS is arbitrarily limiting how much RAM they can use, just like Windows 95 did back in the day.

I think 16GB will be more than adequate for the large majority of Home Premium users until its replacement arrives, probably for a couple years after. We aren't even at 4GB for a typical mainstream user yet. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will raise the cap with SP2 for Vista like it has done with some server SKU service packs.

And there is an interesting product from SuperSpeed that allows full read/write utilization of RAM that exceeds the OS cap for things such as a paging file. I think this type of utility is going to see a lot more interest now that OS limits are lower than hardware limits. A couple years ago, the hardware was often as much of a limiting factor as the OS.

This suggests another question I have. Is Windows XP Pro 64 more stable than Vista 64? I assume that it will also support 16 gb?

XP 64-bit supports 128GB. The OS is fine, but driver and application support lags compared to Vista. A lot of developers viewed XP 64-bit as more of an 'enterprise' SKU of XP because a broader interest in 64-bit was just not there until a year or so ago.

 

[chess9]

Thanks, tcsenter!

Very interesting thread. Many thanks to the contributors.

-Robert

 

[mooseracing]

Since your titale questions states " Can any Windows 32 bit OS support 4 gigs or more of memory?", yes Server 03 Enterprise and Datacenter x86 edition both support more than 4GB's. Makes a great desktop OS

 

[taltamir]

the more ram is mainly a straw man argument. 64bit is better because it is much faster. In some specific encryption related tasks it is 3 to 5 times faster then 32bit, I personally benchmarked 7z compression to be 27% faster (in my tests), I saw reviews from reputable sites showing hash calculation a little over 4 times faster (for the fastest, and 3 times faster for the slowest), and browsers like firefox 64bit and IE 64bit seem to be several times faster (I don't have hard data on that one).

However ram CAN come into play for some people... typically you take 4GB and subtract 0.3GB for general stuff and then ALL the video card ram you have on ALL cards / GPUs... so for a 4870x2 for example you would subtract an additional 2GB of ram in a 32bit OS!

Another point is that an individual APPLICATION can use more then 2GB of space in 64bit. So even if you have 3.3gb of addressable space in 32bit windows, your game is capped at only using 2GB. SEVERAL games HAVE gone over 2GB use in max settings, but it is rather rare.