Windows Vista RAM Limitations
Can’t get enough RAM installed? More RAM may make a better PC, but if you have a standard 32-bit system don’t bother getting more than 4GB as that the most the system will report to Windows. This is simply an architectural limitation of 32-bit Windows. In fact, it is more like 3GB!
A 32-bit version of Vista will never even use the full 4GB of RAM in your system. It’s because of the memory mapped IO reservations, which control how the onboard memory on your installed devices overwrites parts of the system memory, which lowers the total memory available to Vista itself. According to Microsoft, the 32-bit version of Vista is limited to 3.12GB of total available memory: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605
This goes the same for servers, which is a key reason why 64-bit computers are getting increased attention. Memory is no longer expensive and it can help a lot so limitations like this become a real headache for many.
So you move to 64-bit. With this comes some stiff driver requirements, but what do you get for RAM limitations with Vista 64-bit? Actually, it depends on what edition of Vista you are running: Home Basic is limited to 8GB, Home Premium is limited to 16GB and the other editions (Business, Enterprise and Ultimate) let you get all the way up to 128GB.
So how long before we are pissed that 128 is as high as it goes? Well, you can always move to Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP2 64-bit to take advantage of 2 Terabytes of RAM. That should seem like a big number for the foreseeable future.
source:realtime-vista.com
Tags: 64-bit, available_memory, Hardware, support_microsoft, system_memory, Windows, windows vista
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Focker on 07 Aug 2007 at 12:20 am #
Thanks for article.
Why does everyone moan about RAM all the fooking time?
I have been using WinXP with 256MB since years and now Vista with 512MB RAM and I have no problems at all. Runs like a beast for me. Mind you I don’t play games but all programs are lightening fast. I can open a doc in word in under 50 seconds which is fantastic and PhotShop opens in under 4 minutes. My brother is using WinXP with 128MB and his word takes over 5 minutes to open and PhotoShop on his does not even run! So my computer may not be the latest but it is almost up there with the best of them and it is speedy like hell. How much faster can a computer get?
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