Much improvement from 2GB to 4GB with XP?

benskia

benskia

benskia

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6 Oct 2005
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Hi folks,

Just seen that the OCZ is very cheap in this weeks specials.
I bought this same kit (2x1GB) for about £140 6 months ago, and now its less than half price.
So, being the bargain snatcher that I am, I wonder if it is worth buying another 2gb to fit into an a5n-sli c2d rig.

Will I see much improvement / benefit in XP (System seems quick enough anyways at the moment, but heck - if I can make it even faster I'm game)?

Cheers.
 
Unless you have the 64 bit version of Windows XP you won't even be able to use 4GB RAM and I think it will show something the 3GB of usable RAM

However if you intend on upgrading to Vista (again I think you need to use a 64 bit version though I'm not 100% sure) or 64 bit Windows XP I don't think you can ever use the full amount. That said if you think it is cheap and feel like buying go for it, I doubt it will make your system any faster. I went from 2GB to 4GB on my Windows Vista Ultimate and have noticed pretty much no difference at all. There are some more modern games or some programs will be able to make use of it.
 
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You need a 64 bit OS ( either XP or vista x64 ) to fully see 4Gb.

Im currently using 3Gb and both 32bit XP and 32bit Vista see all of it :)
 
I bought 2x1GB OCZ Platinum Rev.2 a while back and had noticed that recently its been available for a good price and seems to be going out of stock at some places.
So I got another 2x1GB, before it becomes discontinued, even though I am running XP Pro 32bit. I am not ready to move my main PC over to Vista yet, as there are still issues (Running Vista Ultimate on my work Laptop).

As for XP, it sees 3.5GB of my 4.0GB and its nice to have that memory available. I can't say that it has made a massive difference so far, except in Adobe Premiere Elements, where I was starting to run into memory issues with my big projects and it wouldn't render the last few elements of the timeline.

Remember, if you do get the extra memory, you will need to use the /3GB switch in your boot.ini to allow the applications to make use of the extra. This allows applications to access 3GB of addressable memory and reserves 1GB for the O/S, as apposed to the normal 2GB/2GB.

It certainly won't do any harm and you have the memory there for when you are ready to move over to Vista.
 
Jazz said:
Unless you have the 64 bit version of Windows XP you won't even be able to use 4GB RAM and I think it will show something the 3GB of usable RAM

However if you intend on upgrading to Vista (again I think you need to use a 64 bit version though I'm not 100% sure) or 64 bit Windows XP I don't think you can ever use the full amount. That said if you think it is cheap and feel like buying go for it, I doubt it will make your system any faster. I went from 2GB to 4GB on my Windows Vista Ultimate and have noticed pretty much no difference at all. There are some more modern games or some programs will be able to make use of it.
Click to expand...

Games that need 2GB under windows vista (a la Battlefield 2) will need 3GB under windows vista.

So under XP running 4GB will be nothing special over 2GB but for vista 4GB would be pretty good, it would make it more snappier and as I said before better for some games as vista is a resource hog :)
 
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