whats the point of more than 4gb on a 32bit system?

[allanon1965]

I have built systems for many years and have never installed more than 4gb on any system that was a 32bit setup..(Vista and 7) and no more than 2gb on 32bit XP.

I am seeing alot of times where people put 6 and 8GB on 32bit vista and 7 and then say how much faster it was than with just 4gb. I think they are nuts! I put 6gb on my 32bit 7 and it shows, but also says only 3.5gb usable.

That being said, I cant see any difference in performance, and honestly dont think there is any benefit to more than 4gb on any 32bit system. Am I wrong?

 

[SickBeast]

I find 32 bit windows usually only gives me 3.2gb usable.

Someone correct me on this if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling you can use a ramdisk within 32 bit Windows. The problem is that there's not that much you can do with a ramdisk unless you leave your computer on all the time.

 

[Nothinman]

For Windows, it's pointless unless you use some stupid hack like a RAM disk to reclaim the memory. For non-Windows it's fine since other OSes can use up to 64G of physical memory just fine, it's only Windows that's gimped.

 

[infoiltrator]

Don't know. I have always heard the 4 gb limitation on 32 bit systems.
OTOH windows can/does allocate memory for video, and cpu's use "not in use memory" these days. Whether any of this works around limitations???
Can memory controlers on chip bypass windows limitation?

 

[Nothinman]

Don't know. I have always heard the 4 gb limitation on 32 bit systems.
OTOH windows can/does allocate memory for video, and cpu's use "not in use memory" these days. Whether any of this works around limitations???
Can memory controlers on chip bypass windows limitation?

No, Windows knows the memory is there and could use it if it wanted to but it doesn't because MS said so. Their excuse is that they're protecting you from bad drivers, but that's a cop-out to me. Hardware without memory remapping is screwed no matter what, but otherwise any system that supports PAE should be able to use all of that memory. And with Linux the situation is even better because on a 32-bit install you have the choice of a 32-bit kernel with PAE or a 64-bit kernel and keeping the 32-bit userland, the best of both worlds.

 

[TC91]

epeen

 

[Sephire]

None. zZilch.

 

[Silenus]

Absolutely none.

The ONLY exception might be if you are planning to change the OS sometime in the near future to 64-bit and you would like to have the extra memory in place already.

 

[TemjinGold]

Virtual Machines

 

[nk215]

Well,

My 32-bit windows had 12 gig of memory for about a year before I get around install Win7x64 on it. I didn't have the time to reinstall all the programs at the time but saw a good deal on memory so I jumped at it.

For that one year, I created an 8 gig ramdisk and uses that as Photoshop scratch drive (along with some other programs scratch spaces). It worked out OK.

The ramdisk program I used at the time will copy the ramdisk contents back to the HD when the computer is shutdown, and copy it back to the ramdisk when the computer is back on. That way I can use it as a temp drive for some minor programs. I always have UPS on my computer.

So if you saw a great deal of memory and don't have a time to upgrade to x64 yet. You can still use the extra memory to gain some benefit. Stuff such as virtual machine vhd file is extremely fast on a ramdisk space.

I am thinking about getting 24 gig on my win7x64 and used 10 gig or so as a ramdisk to store a copy of a vhd file. I do have a SSD now so I maynot see a much as gain as before.

 

[groberts101]

yep, ramdisks would be the only use I could see and would be wasted otherwise on a 32 bit setup.

Fancycache by Romex allows you to leverage invisable ram as well and creates a ram disk of the c-drive. Free beta demo is here.
http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/

 

[Chiropteran]

And with Linux the situation is even better because ... or a 64-bit kernel and keeping the 32-bit userland, the best of both worlds.

How is that different from windows? Windopws 7 64 still uses mostly 32 bit "userland" software, and supports 32 bit fine.

 

[Mark R]

How is that different from windows? Windopws 7 64 still uses mostly 32 bit "userland" software, and supports 32 bit fine.

On Windows that is your only option (except for a few old high-end server products).

MS does not offer a 32 bit kernel with support for >4 GB RAM except for datacenter use. Because drivers must be the same 'bitness' as the kernel, if you have hardware that doesn't have 64 bit drivers, you end up SOL. An example may be certain scientific or industrial work, where specialist scientific or special industrial equipment may be irreplaceable (or not economically replaceable) and up-to-date drivers may not be available for old machines - yet the data processing requirements may have expanded as time has gone by.

On linux, if you hardware only has 32 bit support (or their is some weirdass compatability issue with 64 bit), then you have the option of installing a 32 bit kernel with > 4 GB support.

 

[Nothinman]

How is that different from windows? Windopws 7 64 still uses mostly 32 bit "userland" software, and supports 32 bit fine.

Looking at my Win7 64-bit workstation the only things that 32-bit are some .Net stuff and everything SysWOW64, since MS named them backwards. Basically everything you run by default is 64-bit, except IE, unless you go hunting for it. But there's so much random crap thrown into the Windows directory that it's impossible to just accurately.

 

[imagoon]

PAE is in the Windows Vista / 7 / xp 32 bit kernels, it is just disabled. Up until XP SP2 you could enable it. Microsoft said they disabled it because to many drivers in the user arena were not PAE aware and would blue screen the box.

To this day you can still enable 8GB in windows 7 with some minor 'hacking.' Is there a reason? No.

I did run 16GB on a 32bit system. SQL server would use it fine even though the OS itself would avoid it.

However it is easier to just go 64 bit now.

 

[taltamir]

I am seeing alot of times where people put 6 and 8GB on 32bit vista and 7 and then say how much faster it was than with just 4gb. I think they are nuts! I put 6gb on my 32bit 7 and it shows, but also says only 3.5gb usable.

That being said, I cant see any difference in performance, and honestly dont think there is any benefit to more than 4gb on any 32bit system. Am I wrong?

You are not wrong, those people are deluding themselves. If windows says "6GB of memory of which 3.5gb is usable" it means windows knows that there are 6GP of memory inserted in the mobo, but it can ONLY address 3.5GB out of those 6. Anything above 3.5GB is thus being wasted and does absolutely nothing to improve your speed. This is a simple fact...

Yes, some people swear they can see the difference... some people also swear homeopathy works for them.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

I find 32 bit windows usually only gives me 3.2gb usable.

Someone correct me on this if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling you can use a ramdisk within 32 bit Windows. The problem is that there's not that much you can do with a ramdisk unless you leave your computer on all the time.

Well you can wait for a game to load bit by bit from you hdd or you can use a ramdisk

X86 client versions with PAE enabled do have a usable 37-bit (128 GB) physical address space. The limit that these versions impose is the highest permitted physical RAM address, not the size of the IO space. That means PAE-aware drivers can actually use physical space above 4 GB if they want. For example, drivers could map the “lost” memory regions located above 4 GB and expose this memory as a RAM disk.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx

 

[stevech]

Why does MS push OEMs to pre-install Win7 64 bit on retail PCs when there are still many driver issues with 64 bit? Is it because MS wants to cut the cord with 32 bit and damn the inconvenience, it shall be?

 

[imagoon]

Why does MS push OEMs to pre-install Win7 64 bit on retail PCs when there are still many driver issues with 64 bit? Is it because MS wants to cut the cord with 32 bit and damn the inconvenience, it shall be?

The only driver issues I see anymore is the old legacy garbage that the original manufacturer doesn't want to support. Rolling out 64 bit here in the office and so far the only issues have been people's old self bought printers (I refuse to support them and we block expense for ink) and old scanners.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Why does MS push OEMs to pre-install Win7 64 bit on retail PCs when there are still many driver issues with 64 bit? Is it because MS wants to cut the cord with 32 bit and damn the inconvenience, it shall be?

Its a deal deal deal read the licence agreement kind of thing. You can buy a OEM, wipe or upgrade it but then you have to buy a new windows key with it

 

[Voo]

The only driver issues I see anymore is the old legacy garbage that the original manufacturer doesn't want to support. Rolling out 64 bit here in the office and so far the only issues have been people's old self bought printers (I refuse to support them and we block expense for ink) and old scanners.

Yeah, you really have to work in this day and age to get a configuration that doesn't work fine in 64bit Windows - at least as a user. For companies that can be quite different (oh all those companies with legacy 16bit programs and 15year old hardware that can't be replaced)

Anyways the thing about PAE is that it still limits the amount of memory a process can use to somewhere between 2 and 3gb (depending how much the kernel needs), which limits its usefullness for desktops pretty much, since few users will run several resourceful applications at the same time.

@Nothinman: Why would I want 32bit apps on a 64bit kernel except if there was no 64bit version? Even if you don't need the extra memory, it's still new instructions, more registers, etc. vs. smaller filesizes and pointers (i.e. you get more out of the cache) which I extremely doubt to be noticeable

 

[SickBeast]

Just out of curiosity, couldn't you just put a massive swap file onto a Windows XP ramdisk and effectively use all 16gb of your memory?

 

[Nothinman]

@Nothinman: Why would I want 32bit apps on a 64bit kernel except if there was no 64bit version? Even if you don't need the extra memory, it's still new instructions, more registers, etc. vs. smaller filesizes and pointers (i.e. you get more out of the cache) which I extremely doubt to be noticeable

There's very few reasons, especially on Linux since almost all OSS software should have good 64-bit builds. But it's very convenient upgrade process. You can just buy more memory and install a 64-bit kernel to have access to all of your memory without the (minimal) overhead that PAE includes.

Just out of curiosity, couldn't you just put a massive swap file onto a Windows XP ramdisk and effectively use all 16gb of your memory?

No, the pagefile isn't used like that. It's secondary storage, not accessed directly.

 

[Emulex]

windows 2003 enterprise edition for 32bit apps that just have no love for x64 you can even run AWE/PAE mode in esx

 

[Cerb]

Why does MS push OEMs to pre-install Win7 64 bit on retail PCs when there are still many driver issues with 64 bit? Is it because MS wants to cut the cord with 32 bit and damn the inconvenience, it shall be?

What driver issues would these be? The only ones I've experienced have been with nVidia, and those were (a) not show-stoppers (just annoying driver crashes), and (b) got fixed 2-3 months into Windows 7 being out. Plenty of unsupported peripherals out there, but other than that, it's been quite good.