vista 32bit ram

Reasteh · 22 Dec 2008 at 23:05

just to clarify, vista ultimate 32bit can recognise up to 4gb of ram? as ive heard so many different stories :/

lokkers · 22 Dec 2008 at 23:07

It'll see you've got 4GB of RAM, but a 32bit OS can only see a maximum of 4GB (a limitation of the 32bit address range). Taking into account your other components (gfx, etc) the actual amount of RAM available to the OS is 4GB minus these other divices. This normally turns out around 3.2-3.5GB

Reasteh · 22 Dec 2008 at 23:15

ahh so because i've got a 640mb gfx card it'll only have 3.3gb ish, thats a bit carp

Luxor · 22 Dec 2008 at 23:15

What lokkers said. If you want your OS to see 4gb or more then you need 64bit edition.

mark128 · 23 Dec 2008 at 05:32

Yeah basically windows 32-bit (and any other 32 bit OS for that matter) can only address 2^32 bytes of memory. This was never an issue untill recently as most people had less than 4gig of memory. Now we've got 64bit computing which can address 2^64 bytes which should keep us computer users happy for many many years to come!

lokkers · 23 Dec 2008 at 07:14

Reasteh said:
thats a bit carp

Not really - its a limitation of the 32 bit architecture, and at the time of its divising most machines had 16mb!

If you want to see the full 4GB (or more) install a 64bit OS. There's really no reason not to.

mark128 · 23 Dec 2008 at 07:24

As bill gates famously said..."I can't see why anyone would need more than 640k memory" Although there's talk that, that was just a rumor. Point being though when windows 95 was first developed, 4gig was almost unimaginable.

Burnsy2023 · 23 Dec 2008 at 14:02

mark128 said:
As bill gates famously said..."I can't see why anyone would need more than 640k memory" Although there's talk that, that was just a rumor. Point being though when windows 95 was first developed, 4gig was almost unimaginable.

Bill has refuted that rumour.

Why oh why would you want to be on 32bit Vista if your PC is 64bit capable?

braveheart · 23 Dec 2008 at 14:26

32bits OS max is 4GB but showed as 3.5GB -- MS already deicded that 32bits will be no longer for next Windows OS after W7 -- think next new Windows which due by after 2013 or later will using 64bits OS only..

for 64bits OS you can plug any amount of RAM between 512MB to 8GB (some new mobo can max to 16Gb or 24GB) -- for 32bits you cannot pass 4GB RAM.

32bits OS using backward to 16bits app (16/32) and 64bits cannot use 16bits app so 64 can use 32bits as backward (32/64)

Burnsy2023 · 23 Dec 2008 at 14:29

braveheart said:
for 64bits OS you can plug any amount of RAM between 512MB to 8GB (some new mobo can max to 16Gb or 24GB) -- for 32bits you cannot pass 4GB RAM.

Just remember that's a motherboard limitation not an OS one. The max RAM for x64 is in the terabytes.

braveheart · 23 Dec 2008 at 16:06

but you cannot excess more than motherboard max ram -- when you read the manual for max ram that you have to meet the max RAM for mobo as OS can up to 128GB max -- it depend on your motherboard max ram like my GBT M59SLI-S5 which is up to 16GB max (some new Intel 1366FSB for Core i7 max to 24GB) -- some servers motherboard max to 64GB or more