Vista 64 and ram question

Antineo69 · 29 Feb 2008 at 19:44

Hi,I Think this the right thread.

I just revice Windows Vista 64,upgrading from vista 32, and cosair 2gb 6400class 4 and Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB SATA2
at monment i got 2gb already in the pc.

just wanding do i need to install update to be able use 4gb first then put the ram in or the other way round.
Oh,and another thing do i need to change voltage or something.

Here My Spec At The Moment:
Os:Window Vista 32

Cpu: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.6GHz Socket AM2

MotherBoard: MSI K9N SLI-2F, nForce 570 SLI, DDR2,
Socket-AM2, 2xGbLAN, ATX, 2xPCI-Ex16

Cpu Cooler: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme With Scythe S-FLEX 1200RPM Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan

Psu: Ocz 700Watts

Ram: Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX

HardDrive: Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB SATA2

VideoCard: Msi 8800 GTS OC

Screen:Samsung 22" LCD Syncmaster 226BW

thanks

comatose · 29 Feb 2008 at 20:13

You can put the RAM in first then upgrade the OS. If you run with 4gb of memory in Vista 32 you will simply not be able to use all of it (typically around 3.5gbs).

Bear in mind you will probably have to do a full re-install of Windows to x64 (as opposed to an incremental upgrade of the 32bit version). You may also need to enable the memory re-map feature in the BIOS first to ensure all the memory is recognised.

Burnsy2023 · 29 Feb 2008 at 20:21

comatose said:
You can put the RAM in first then upgrade the OS. If you run with 4gb of memory in Vista 32 you will simply not be able to use all of it (typically around 3.5gbs).

Bear in mind you will probably have to do a full re-install of Windows to x64 (as opposed to an incremental upgrade of the 32bit version). You may also need to enable the memory re-map feature in the BIOS first to ensure all the memory is recognised.

Yep, you can update all you like but the x86 version of any OS will not be able to utilise all 4gb of RAM, although the update will tell you have 4gb it can't use it all.

Burnsy

chris74 · 29 Feb 2008 at 20:26

Just a sidenote.
According to annandtech who recently reviewed SP1. All vista variations will correctly report how much ram is installed.
So if you have vista x86(32 bit) and 4gb ram or 8gb ram it will show you as having that.

However but most importantly the limitations of a 32 bit OS is that it will still only be able to use ~3.5gb of ram and the purpose was to stop people stressing that some of their ram is not showing and complaining they had a borked version of vista.

Edit: Just beaten to it.