Andarthiel on 15/1/2009 at 06:48
I recently decided to upgrade my comp further by getting 4GB of RAM and I do realize that 32 bit Operating Systems like XP with SP2 can't detect 4GB.
But I did read around and a few people on forums and the like mentioned that the maximum it will detect is 3.5 GB(with a certain edit or tweak) and mine only shows up as 3.07Gb or something like that. Is there a way to boost the usage to 3.5(I know it's impossible to get 4) just because I want to get the most out of the RAM I spent money on without upgrading to a 64 bit OS. I don't want to go to 64 bit mostly because of the stories I've eheard about compatibility and driver issues(my brother had it happen to him).
My Motherboard is able to recognize both sticks of RAM so it is capable.
My System Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+
4GB DDR2 RAM
512 MB Galaxy Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
HP 735 DVD-RW
Maxtor 40GB IDE HDD
Western Digital 80GB IDE HDD
Western Digital 500GB SATA HDD
Windows XP SP2
Andarthiel on 15/1/2009 at 12:39
Well I followed the instructions on that page and put the /PAE command into the boot.ini and nothing changed on restart. It still says 3.0GB. But I think I was enable already before I put that command in, it said Physical Address Extension in System Properties ever since I installed my Mainboard drivers.
Papy on 15/1/2009 at 13:18
Quote Posted by Andarthiel
I did read around and a few people on forums and the like mentioned that the maximum it will detect is 3.5 GB
It depends on how much memory you have on your video card. If you have an integrated video card and assign to it only 8 Meg of RAM in the BIOS, there will be 3.5 GB of address space available.
mothra on 15/1/2009 at 14:57
i got an 8800gts and it leaves me 3.2gb ram.
i wouldn't play around with your settings for a measly few mb ram.
get win7 64bit. I installed win7beta on my pc and it run in its beta state already quicker than XP and more stable than Vista sp1.
Bjossi on 15/1/2009 at 18:32
I agree with mothra, just go 64-bit if you want more memory than 3.5 or 4 GBs.
Hell, if we can crack open the artificial limit of 64-bit operating systems (which is 128 GB, iirc), a fully 64-bit system could fetch/write data from/to 64-bit wide memory addresses without any limits, making up to 17.18 billion GBs allocatable.
Papy on 16/1/2009 at 03:01
Is there any processor with a 64 bit address bus? As far as I know, Athlon X2 were 40 bits physical and 48 bits virtual, I read Barcelona is 48 bits for both and Core i7 (desktop) is 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual.
Bjossi on 16/1/2009 at 04:48
This is true. Processors are limited this way for the same reason as the 128 GB limit I guess. Hell, even 36 bits offer whole 64 GB of memory allocation. The processor manufacturers will go true 64-bit when the time comes I guess.
