3g of ram or 4g or 2g ?

jamupnorth · Feb 8, 2007

Hi i have 2 x 1g of 400 mhz ram in my motherboard working in dual channel mode & a friend from work has given me another 1g stick of ram which i have put in the board but is now 3g of single channel ram ! should i have done this or tried to get a hold of another stick to get 4g of ram and dual channel mode back ? what do you think ?

Steevo · Feb 8, 2007

Beyond 3Gb you will not be able to efficiently access the memory unless you have a 64bit native Operating System. You might not be able to access anything beyond about 3.25Gb anyway depending on motherboard limitations.

My advice? Keep the two and sell the one.

Jadawin · Feb 8, 2007

Ok, I have 4 GB RAM in my machine, 4x 1GB. And using XP and Vista 32bit, all I could use was roughly 2.8 GB of it, the rest was waisted because the OS needs some (virtual) address space for itself and the hardware and 4GB is all it can address in total. So it was using address space for other things instead of available RAM. I was waisting 1.2 GB RAM, causing me to move to Vista 64bit.

Now, if YOU are on a 32bit OS, then you may be waisting a bit of memory as well, but not that much because you only have 3GB anyway. Probably 200-300MB, but that would give you 2.7 GB of available RAM. I don't know if you need that 700MB more RAM or if you are totally happy with 2GB anyway.

If I were you, I would run some benchmarks with 3GB and 2GB in your machine, preferably games or other software which you are using regulary. You will then see if the 3GB have any impact at all, if dual channel is necessary for you or not etc.

niko084 · Feb 9, 2007

Steevo said:
Beyond 3Gb you will not be able to efficiently access the memory unless you have a 64bit native Operating System. You might not be able to access anything beyond about 3.25Gb anyway depending on motherboard limitations.

My advice? Keep the two and sell the one.

Erm Xp Pro will use 4gigs...

And Server Os will use erm 48gb I think it is.....

Jadawin · Feb 9, 2007

Yes and no. You can HAVE 4GB in XP Pro. But like I said, there's only 4GB of (virtual) address space available for XP. Which means there will be some overlapping of addresses which Windows and the hardware need for themselves and that addresspace will be gone for the RAM. Whatever is left, will be usable for the RAM and limits the amount of RAM Windows will be able to use. For me, it was 1.2 GB gone from the 4GB address space, leaving me with 2.8 GB out of 4 GB. So I switched to Vista x64. No problems there

There is something called PAE (Physical Address extension), but that's also something the applications must support by using a special API (called AWE). Otherwise the 4GB limit is the limit, even if you have 64GB RAM. And software using AWE is rare and most certainly not software people are using on desktops. That's why e.g. Windows 2000 Advanced Server can use 8 GB, 2000 Datacenter even 32 GB and 2003 Enterprise Server even 64GB. Not what everyone is running at home. And even for those OS you need software supporting that feature.

Completely Bonkers · Feb 9, 2007

I think the 4GB limit is a physical limit on some chipsets. You don't just need server versions of windows... you need server chipsets that can address the memory space.

niko084 · Feb 9, 2007

Jadawin said:
Yes and no. You can HAVE 4GB in XP Pro. But like I said, there's only 4GB of (virtual) address space available for XP. Which means there will be some overlapping of addresses which Windows and the hardware need for themselves and that addresspace will be gone for the RAM. Whatever is left, will be usable for the RAM and limits the amount of RAM Windows will be able to use. For me, it was 1.2 GB gone from the 4GB address space, leaving me with 2.8 GB out of 4 GB. So I switched to Vista x64. No problems there

There is something called PAE (Physical Address extension), but that's also something the applications must support by using a special API (called AWE). Otherwise the 4GB limit is the limit, even if you have 64GB RAM. And software using AWE is rare and most certainly not software people are using on desktops. That's why e.g. Windows 2000 Advanced Server can use 8 GB, 2000 Datacenter even 32 GB and 2003 Enterprise Server even 64GB. Not what everyone is running at home. And even for those OS you need software supporting that feature.

Ya but then you just use load your kernal into ram, and I think I read somewhere about using it as a page file also...

Ya I know most software wont use it all

A pity...

niko084 · Feb 9, 2007

Completely Bonkers said:
I think the 4GB limit is a physical limit on some chipsets. You don't just need server versions of windows... you need server chipsets that can address the memory space.

Well can't say for all versions but XP Home will only recognize 3gigs I think it is period as an OS...

Heh if its a mainboard only thing, mine will do 8 gigs.

jamupnorth · Feb 9, 2007

In system in xp pro it still only sees 2g of ram but the bios sees 3 g of ram ?

Nitro-Max · Feb 10, 2007

Depends what you use the memory for really for gaming running duel might be abit faster but for running apps like photoshop system defrag etc 3 gig would do nice just try some benchmarks m8 with 2 gig then 3 plus are the timmings matched because it will default the timmings to the higher one.

PyroInc · Feb 10, 2007

jamupnorth said:
In system in xp pro it still only sees 2g of ram but the bios sees 3 g of ram ?

same here.

Gwargor · Feb 10, 2007

More than 2g of ram in 32bit winXP is just a waste and if you went to single channel to do it, it would hinder your system, but if you plan on getting Vista anytime soon it would help a lot and 4g in vista at this point is the way to go if you can afford it.

jamupnorth · Feb 14, 2007

I have went back to 2 gig of ram in dual channel as the machine runs a lot better which surprised me !! more is not always best..lol. i will go to 4 gig of ram when i eventually get round to putting vista in.

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3g of ram or 4g or 2g ?

jamupnorth

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Steevo

Jadawin

niko084

Jadawin

Completely Bonkers

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niko084

niko084

jamupnorth

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Nitro-Max

PyroInc

Gwargor

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jamupnorth

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