Memory

[DanDaMan315]

I have 4gb of ram on my computer running windows xp 32bit but windows only recognizes 3.25gb of the ram. What is going on here?

 

[Cpt Faceplant]

I'm not an expert by any means, but i believe you have to have a 64-bit OS to recognize more than 3GB.

 

[DanDaMan315]

I'm pretty sure its 4gb.

 

[Blain]

32-bit Windows can only address 4GBs of total memory in your system.
Some of that total is taken up by video card memory, etc.
So 3.25GB is what's left out of the 4GB total.

The 4GB 32-bit reporting issue is very common and discussed quite a bit here.
A little searching will tell you even more.

The bottom line is that to use all your 4GBs of system memory, you'll have to make the move to a 64-bit OS, like XP 64-bit, Vista 64-bit or Windows 7 64-bit.
There's no other way around it

 

[Paperdoc]

My son reminded me of another impact related to this. If you switch to 64-bit OS which can address (and hence use) much more than 4 GB of RAM, everything you do uses up more resources and time. Most variables in an application are treated as 64-bit so it uses twice as much RAM space, and the CPU must move twice as much data around, etc. The result is that many applications actually run a bit slower under a 64-bit OS.

Now, the advantage of having and using more RAM comes when you use so much RAM simultaneously that your applications can't all fit into what you have, and the OS is forced to shuffle data between the real RAM and the virtual RAM in the Swap File on the hard drive. That is VERY much slower, so more RAM to avoid this is a big help. However, if you never hove this much RAM in use anyway, moving to more RAM will not speed up anything, and might slow you down for other reasons. In your case, since you already have 4 GB of RAM but can only use 3.25 GB, I doubt you would see enough improvement in application speed from "adding" 0.75 GB to offset the effects of using a 64-bit OS. That is, unless you now have apps using the Swap File that could fit into RAM without Swapping if only a further 0.75 GB were available.

 

[Shargrath]

Question,

If XP only recognizes 3.25GB of the 4GB of ram, does that Ram still get used in apps?

Or would your computer run programs as if it only had 3.25GB instead of 4GB?

 

[brblx]

3.25.

it can't address the other .75gb. for all purposes, it's not there.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

Originally posted by: Shargrath
Question,

If XP only recognizes 3.25GB of the 4GB of ram, does that Ram still get used in apps?

Or would your computer run programs as if it only had 3.25GB instead of 4GB?

Only 3.25 is available for applications. As Blain said above:

Originally posted by: Blain
The bottom line is that to use all your 4GBs of system memory, you'll have to make the move to a 64-bit OS, like XP 64-bit, Vista 64-bit or Windows 7 64-bit.
There's no other way around it

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Paperdoc
My son reminded me of another impact related to this. If you switch to 64-bit OS which can address (and hence use) much more than 4 GB of RAM, everything you do uses up more resources and time. Most variables in an application are treated as 64-bit so it uses twice as much RAM space, and the CPU must move twice as much data around, etc. The result is that many applications actually run a bit slower under a 64-bit OS.

Now, the advantage of having and using more RAM comes when you use so much RAM simultaneously that your applications can't all fit into what you have, and the OS is forced to shuffle data between the real RAM and the virtual RAM in the Swap File on the hard drive. That is VERY much slower, so more RAM to avoid this is a big help. However, if you never hove this much RAM in use anyway, moving to more RAM will not speed up anything, and might slow you down for other reasons. In your case, since you already have 4 GB of RAM but can only use 3.25 GB, I doubt you would see enough improvement in application speed from "adding" 0.75 GB to offset the effects of using a 64-bit OS. That is, unless you now have apps using the Swap File that could fit into RAM without Swapping if only a further 0.75 GB were available.

That simply isn't true. In fact, when a program is 64bit, it is actually faster and better. Look at comparisons between CS4 on Windows and OS X. The Windows version is significantly faster because the Windows version is 64bit whereas the OS X version is 32bit.

When I transistioned my system from XP Pro 32 to Vista Business 64, I noticed almost no difference with regards to performance (ok, it booted up much slower), this was same hardware, same everything, just different OS.

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: Paperdoc
My son reminded me of another impact related to this. If you switch to 64-bit OS which can address (and hence use) much more than 4 GB of RAM, everything you do uses up more resources and time. Most variables in an application are treated as 64-bit so it uses twice as much RAM space, and the CPU must move twice as much data around, etc. The result is that many applications actually run a bit slower under a 64-bit OS.

Now, the advantage of having and using more RAM comes when you use so much RAM simultaneously that your applications can't all fit into what you have, and the OS is forced to shuffle data between the real RAM and the virtual RAM in the Swap File on the hard drive. That is VERY much slower, so more RAM to avoid this is a big help. However, if you never hove this much RAM in use anyway, moving to more RAM will not speed up anything, and might slow you down for other reasons. In your case, since you already have 4 GB of RAM but can only use 3.25 GB, I doubt you would see enough improvement in application speed from "adding" 0.75 GB to offset the effects of using a 64-bit OS. That is, unless you now have apps using the Swap File that could fit into RAM without Swapping if only a further 0.75 GB were available.

What your son told you is bunk.