4 gig of memory

No, you will have 0.5GB to 1GB of RAM sitting unused in your system. If you're staying with 32bit for the foreseeable future, it only makes sense to buy 4GB if you're running in dual channel. Otherwise, buying 3GB will prove much cheaper (although your system may not support this configuration). Solution: upgrade to 64bit :cool: (it's free after all!)
 
Ok, forget dual channel, that has nothing to do with what windows can use. I was just trying to give some meaning to a choice of using 4GB.

Put simply, your 32bit system can't physically utilise any more than 4GB of RAM. And when I say RAM, I mean your system memory, graphics card memory, network card...sound card...and just about anything else that's in your system put together.

So, System RAM+graphics card+sound card+NIC+anything else with memory on it = 4GB.

For example, if you have 512Mb of RAM on your graphics card, that leaves 3.5GB for everything else.

Or, if you have a graphics card with 2GB or RAM on it (:eek:), and you've also put two 2GB RAM sticks on your mobo (4GB), you're gonna find that only 2GB of this system RAM will actually be used as the other 2GB is being 'taken' by the graphics card and so can't be allocated to your other RAM stick. A bit of a waste I'm sure you'll agree.

It's a bit of a weird concept to explain properly, and I'm sure someone else will do a better job of it. But the underlying point is that if you buy 4GB of RAM, some of it will simply sit there, unused and redundant; unable to be utilised by windows.

and what do you mean by free ?
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If you have a license key for windows Vista 32-bit, OEM or retail, this key is also valid on the equivalent 64-bit edition of Vista. So, you need to source yourself a copy of Vista Premium 64-bit and you're sorted. I think MS have a site where you can request the DVD, although I haven't a clue where it is.
 
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A lot of people seem to still be uisng XP for gaming as it is more stable. Will there not come a time when 2gb is not enough in modern games. Have we already reached this phase? As I'm still on XP and 2gb of ram.
 
pendulum666 said:
A lot of people seem to still be uisng XP for gaming as it is more stable. Will there not come a time when 2gb is not enough in modern games. Have we already reached this phase? As I'm still on XP and 2gb of ram.
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The performance line between these two operating systems is becoming ever more fine. And I expect there will come a time very shortly when the Vista gaming experience supercedes that of XP. Naturally, this will coincide with games being more dependant on greater RAM and other features which Vista offers. DX10.1 for example.
 
If you wish to utilize 4GB of RAM then you will have to be using a 64-bit Operating System which in all honesty at this stage in its life isn't a problem. A 64-bit platform really is fantastic, it is securer, more stable, faster and just generally a much better platform. :)
 
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If the £30 odd difference isn't an issue, is there much benefit from the extra gig or so that 2*2gb sticks will give, over just having 2gb in total?
 
banja said:
If the £30 odd difference isn't an issue, is there much benefit from the extra gig or so that 2*2gb sticks will give, over just having 2gb in total?
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If you're buying RAM now, it makes sense to just get 4GB even if you're on a 32-bit OS, purely because it's so cheap.

For what it's worth, I've recently gone from 2GB to 4GB, and I'm running Vista 32-bit. Windows reports that I have 3,327MB of RAM, and that's with a 256MB graphics card. Can't actually say that my PC feels quicker, but I've not been playing games or anything yet so that may change.
 
TheVoice said:
If you're buying RAM now, it makes sense to just get 4GB even if you're on a 32-bit OS, purely because it's so cheap.

For what it's worth, I've recently gone from 2GB to 4GB, and I'm running Vista 32-bit. Windows reports that I have 3,327MB of RAM, and that's with a 256MB graphics card. Can't actually say that my PC feels quicker, but I've not been playing games or anything yet so that may change.
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yup thats what mine is quoting just installed vista 32bit tonight, and it says 3,327MB, i have managed to put 4gigs in tonight, as i needed to up the voltage bit to allow it too boot.
 
The short answer to your questionis yes. But depending on type of memory your motherboard may have problems running the Ram with your O/S. In 32bit Vista you will need a hotfix for the memory overlap so that it can run with th O/S and the same with 64 bit Vista. Unless you have SP1 installed it will not be visible to the O/S.
The confusion comes with the O/S Kernel. Because the kernel of the Operating System can only address a certain amount of memory in its different incarnations. Vista 32bit can only handle 4GB in any format, Vista 64 bit Home Premium can only handle up to 8GB memory space, and Vista Ultimate can handle 16GB+ in ints current configuration. But because Vista was released with memory configuration errors, the memory configurator needs a hotfix to fix the errors.
With SP1 installed you will now see your whole memory configuration. The only issue with this is that you will stil only have around 3.25GB of Ram available to a 32 bit Vista O/S.
A 32bit O/S can address more but because of Legacy Addressing and even the 640k headspace for dos is added to this unnecessary usage of ram, but because of CMOS leaving this overhead windows still has to address it.
I think we can blame the last one on Bill.
 
Burtoner said:
I just installed vista ulitmate 32bit and with new service pack 1 out it reports 4gigs :)
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The service pack means that the total memory in your computer is shown but it'll still only be able to address the 3gigs. It's to stop people being confused when in the control panel only 3, instead of the 4gigs they have, is shown as available.
 
Burtoner said:
I just installed vista ulitmate 32bit and with new service pack 1 out it reports 4gigs :)
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Hello Burtoner, as Going to Cali has already stated, with Service Pack 1 installed, Windows Vista will report the amount of physical memory you have installed in your system. However, it doesn't really make any difference weather it is displaying the amount of memory that the Operating System has access too or the amount that you have installed in your machine. Either way, to put it bluntly, you don’t have access to the full 4GB of RAM that you have installed if you are using the 32-bit edition of Windows Vista. :)
 
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