How much RAM do I have?

[Knowname]

Hi I heard you can access more than 4gig in 32bit windows by fooling the computer. What I'm told to do is when I have more than the accessible amount of RAM simply make a RAM drive of the extraneous amount or less and put your page/ swap file onto that partition. Sounded easy and before I took the plunge I made a RAMDISK of 512mb with my 2gb (2.1gb XMS ram) without a problem. well I ordered 4 gigs more (2x2gb XMS) and put it in for 3gb addressable. I use RAMDisk MFC to make my ramdisk and tried to make first a 3gb (the maximum allowed) fixed disk but it page faulted on me before I was able to do anything with it. WELL than I made a deal with it, I'll try 2gb if it'll WORK for me :/ and it did! So than I moved the page drive over, sized it to 2gig max and min and... I don't understand... things are SLOWER now!! Windows tells me there's still 3gbs being addressed but I don't believe it :/ why are things so slow!! Is there anywhere else I can check other than left clicking my computer that will tell me how much ram I'm able to use? the new sticks aren't slower than the old ones, in fact they're FASTER but clocked at the same speed just for compatibility. I went through my mb's manual (Asus M3N-HT Deluxe) and I installed everything right.

 

[daveybrat]

Don't bother with all of that. A 32-Bit operating system simply cannot address 4GB of ram. There is no magic trick to force something to do what it is not designed to do.

Upgrade to Vista64 or Windows7 64-Bit to take advantage of 4GB+.

 

[Knowname]

bah unfortunately not all my programs are 64bit compatible... but yeah, it seemed faster with just 2 sticks of ram, it'd probly be even slightly faster with just the new ram. But I was hoping it'd be TURBO fast with all four. BUT go figure life hates me. It's not. thanks for the reply.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Knowname
bah unfortunately not all my programs are 64bit compatible...

They don't need to be. 64-bit Windows can run 32-bit software just fine. If you want full use of your RAM, switch to 64-bit.