How-To Geek Forums » Windows Vista
4 sticks of memory- only reg. 3 (vista premium)
(19 posts)
According to http://www.microsoft.com/windo.....64bit.mspx if you have the 32-bit version of Vista the limit is 4 GB and the limit with the 64-bit version of Vista Home Premium is 16 GB.
I have read that getting Vista 32-bit to go above 3 GB can be a problem. I'm not sure about that as I have only had 3 GB at the most.
I think the issue was something about the addressing on the 32-bit version not being about to access much more then 3 GB.
All the Vista Editions (Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, etc) come in two versions. 32-bit and 64-bit.
You can see what you currently have by doing the following:
1. Goto Control Panel\System and Maintenance\System
2. Under System look at "System Type". It will say 32-bit or 64-bit depending on what you have.
If you have a 64-bit processor then you can probably upgrade to the 64-bit version.
The only problem is there isn't always drivers available for the 64-bit version for all the devices installed and older 16-bit programs will not work with it.
32-bit operating systems can only access ~3.2GB of RAM, so if you want to use all 4 you need to switch to 64-bit. There is a PAE mode which is a hack and your applications won't really use it.
For loads more technical information check out this post from the excellent Jeff Atwood:
Yep. I agree. I think 2 GB should be just fine for any normal Windows Vista machine.
You would need to be doing things like video editing, running virtual machines and many advanced tasks that use the RAM before needing to upgrade.
Also for more information on the 4 GB of RAM issue see http://www.codinghorror.com/bl.....00811.html
In short there are limitations with a 32-bit processor and a 32-bit OS that prevent the OS from using all 4 GB of RAM.
I don't really understand what all the stuff on the page means but apparently the limitations are there.
Edit: It appears The Geek beat me to it.
I just found another article on the 3GB/4GB memory problem at http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm
It seems to have more information then the other article.
Including many interesting things I did not know.
Apparently many devices in the computer use the map of memory in the computer for addressing their own RAM.
So for a 32-bit System with a max of 4GB that means a video card with 1GB of space would take the space that last 1GB is using making it pointless to have that much RAM.
Also the system was designed in the days of a maximum of 1MB of RAM so this 3GB limit didn't seem like a problem them.
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