True or false!...

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disabled

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True or false... that Windows XP Pro 32bit can not see more than 2GB RAM?
 
It sees max 3GB. Vista 32-bit sees 3.5GB unofficially although SP1 raised that to 4GB acknowledgment but 3GB usage. 64-bit goes way up to 128GB.
 
bwana said:
False.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555223
Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads up, BUT! they are not specific whether it's 32bit or 64bit They just state Windows Pro XP, so according to the thread here the max it can read is 3MB and not 4MB Is this correct? I really need to know because someone said I must take out my 2 x512's and stick in 2x1GB's because it won't see more than 2GB's so my understanding is that I won't waste my money buying 2 x1GB's and leave the 512's which I should see 3GB's I really don't want to waste money here as it's temprary as I'll soon be updating PC Many thanks!
 
disabled said:
Thanks for the heads up, BUT! they are not specific whether it's 32bit or 64bit They just state Windows Pro XP, so according to the thread here the max it can read is 3MB and not 4MB Is this correct? I really need to know because someone said I must take out my 2 x512's and stick in 2x1GB's because it won't see more than 2GB's so my understanding is that I won't waste my money buying 2 x1GB's and leave the 512's which I should see 3GB's I really don't want to waste money here as it's temprary as I'll soon be updating PC Many thanks!
Click to expand...
Really?

Summary:

Basic information about the Virtual Memory implementation in 32 bit versions of Windows 2000, XP, 2003 Server etc.
Click to expand...
In fact they mention 32 Bit on at least five occasions.
 
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DeFunct said:
It sees max 3GB. Vista 32-bit sees 3.5GB unofficially although SP1 raised that to 4GB acknowledgment but 3GB usage. 64-bit goes way up to 128GB.
Click to expand...

64 bit CPU and OS can see up to 16 exabytes of RAM.
1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes — 1024^6, or 2^60 = 1 exabyte.
 
bwana said:
Really?

In fact they mention 32 Bit on at least five occasions.
Click to expand...

Thanks bwana, apologies! I need to go and see an eye specialist never mind about more memory LOL...Thanks I'm now convinced that by adding an extra 2GB's is not a waste of money! and the story I was originally told, False!

So altogether I will have 3GB's RAM, my board takes up to 4GB

Also Thanks to PeterCH, DeFunct and xeo57 for your input!:)
 
Thought XP could with PAE enabled.

Sourced from Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
In computing, Physical Address Extension (PAE) refers to a feature of x86 and x86-64 processors that allows more than 4 Gigabytes[1] of physical memory to be used in 32-bit systems, given appropriate operating system support.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension#Windows
PAE is supported in the following versions of 32-bit Windows:
Version Maximum Physical Memory
Windows 2000 Advanced Server 8 GB
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server 32 GB
Windows XP 4 GB
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition 32 GB
Windows Server 2003 R2 (or SP1) Enterprise Edition 64 GB
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition 64 GB
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition 4 GB
Windows Vista 4 GB
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise or Datacenter Edition 64 GB
Windows Server 2008 other editions 4 GB

Windows XP SP2 and later, by default, on processors with the no-execute (NX) or execute-disable (XD) feature, runs in PAE mode in order to allow NX. The NX (or XD) bit resides in bit 63 of the page table entry and, without PAE, page table entries only have 32 bits; therefore PAE mode is required if the NX feature is to be exploited. However, desktop versions of Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista) limit physical address space to 4 GB for driver compatibility reasons.
Click to expand...
 
You could use PAE but a 32bit process cannot use more than 4GB of RAM so why would you want to do this as the gains you can make maybe 500MB up from 3GB is not worth much. Also since the video memory is mapped into the same address space even if the OS could see 4GB you would still end up with less showing in Windows XP 32bit.
 
Pyro said:
Vista has it's own limitations. Sure they have their reasons...
Home Basic: 8GB
Home Premium: 16GB
Ultimate: 128GB
Business: 128GB
Enterprise: 128GB

Maybe this has changed since.
Click to expand...

Vista is crippled. A 64bit processor and OS can address a max of 16 exobytes of RAM. 32 bit processors and OS'es can only address - around 4GB. 16 Bit processors much less.

he emergence of the 64-bit architecture effectively increases the memory ceiling to 264 addresses, equivalent to approximately 17.2 billion gigabytes, 16.8 million terabytes, or 16 exabytes of RAM. To put this in perspective, in the days when 4 MB of main memory was commonplace, the maximum memory ceiling of 232 addresses was about 1,000 times larger than typical memory configurations. Today, when over 2 GB of main memory is common, the ceiling of 264 addresses is about ten trillion times larger, i.e., ten billion times more headroom than the 232 case.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit
 
True, like there's no "real" reason that Home and business editions should differ, there was also no reason for them to limit the amount of processors you could use on specific licenses.

Still, for the time being at least, where will you load more than 128GB (or even 16GB in most cases) onto a Vista machine?

----

Also - most versions of 2008 supports 2TB. Most versions of 32-bit 2008 also supports, interestingly, 64GB.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778.aspx

Right version for the right job ;)
 
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