Newbe - 4gb with Vista32

[PMM]

Hi, just received a box of parts for my first ever build.

On skimming the literature for the menory (Corsair XMS2) 2*2gb I found inside this statement:

"Corsair's line of 4GB menory kits are designded or PC's featuring 64-bit operating systems. Installing 4GB onto PC's with 32 bit operating systems is not advised nor supported under warranty."

Reading thru the posts here I got the impression that 4GB was OK but only just over 3GB would be recognized.

Did I buy the only 4GB set that won't work?

Thoughts?

Gigabyte GS-P35-DS#L
e3110
Vista prem 32
8800gt

Glen

 

[Dadofamunky]

Originally posted by: PMM
Hi, just received a box of parts for my first ever build.

On skimming the literature for the menory (Corsair XMS2) 2*2gb I found inside this statement:

"Corsair's line of 4GB menory kits are designded or PC's featuring 64-bit operating systems. Installing 4GB onto PC's with 32 bit operating systems is not advised nor supported under warranty."

Reading thru the posts here I got the impression that 4GB was OK but only just over 3GB would be recognized.

Did I buy the only 4GB set that won't work?

Thoughts?

Gigabyte GS-P35-DS#L
e3110
Vista prem 32
8800gt

Glen

That's a weird line of reasoning from Corsair, since 90%+ of Vista users run 32-bit and a sh*tload of those have 4 GB.

What happens is that Vista sees only around 3GB of memory after the OS is loaded. The full 32-bit addressing space isn't visible due to resource constraints. there have been tons of threads about this very issue. But the 4GB kit will in no way break your system.

Your RAM should run fine. Except I would take that piece of crap memory kit back and get another set from a different vendor. Corsair is full of BS in that area. I can't believe they'd say that.

 

[lopri]

Yeah that doesn't make much sense to me. If anything a 64bit OS will show flaws of DIMM more readily than a 32bit OS.

 

[Tweakin]

You will be fine. You will run into the standard limitation of windows 32, ie only showing 3.2GB or so of ram, but you will be fine.

Welcome to the forums.

 

[jaqie]

Not if the memory chipset supports PAE. PAE is an old intel server mobo trick that allows a 32 bit OS to access and use over 4GB of physical RAM with one catch: a single thread (process) can only access just under 4GB. The reason that without PAE 32 bit OSes cannot "see" over 3.2GB or so of RAM is expansion board address space is located at the end of the memory address space - 4GB on down. it's a bit complicated, but basically (oversimplified and technicially part wrong but good way to put it to laymen) every device in the system is accessed through a bit of RAM address space.

 

[Nothinman]

Not if the memory chipset supports PAE. PAE is an old intel server mobo trick that allows a 32 bit OS to access and use over 4GB of physical RAM with one catch: a single thread (process) can only access just under 4GB. The reason that without PAE 32 bit OSes cannot "see" over 3.2GB or so of RAM is expansion board address space is located at the end of the memory address space - 4GB on down. it's a bit complicated, but basically (oversimplified and technicially part wrong but good way to put it to laymen) every device in the system is accessed through a bit of RAM address space.

While true it only applies to non-Windows client OSes, MS has artificially limited them to 4G physical even with PAE enabled.

 

[jaqie]

Which is not done in server 2003 (which is basically xp sp2, more or less). I think I saw a hack to enable it in xp, and I know I saw a hack to enable RAID5 software support in XP (which is there but disabled as well in xp but not 2k3).

 

[Nothinman]

Which is not done in server 2003 (which is basically xp sp2, more or less). I think I saw a hack to enable it in xp, and I know I saw a hack to enable RAID5 software support in XP (which is there but disabled as well in xp but not 2k3).

All the sites I've seen claiming to fully enable PAE in XP didn't work, the RAID thing is a lot simpler since you just have to replace the software RAID driver.