Vista and 4g of RAM

[Warrik]

Ok, Ive read alot of things about Vista's 32bit RAM ceiling, and while it appears to be 4g, can anyone actually confirm that you can utilize a full 4g of RAM? Ive read that if your video card has over 200m of RAM or so that it allots a portion of your video RAM to its over all memory allocation taking away from what you might actually have in slotted RAM.

I have an 8800gtx with 768RAM, and currently use 2g of 800mhz corsair. I want to add another 2g of RAM if I install Vista again ( in prep for Crysis and Conan ). Would I be wasting my time adding the 2 sticks of RAM? Is it even worth it? Using Vista Home Premium and what I currently have, my RAM usage idles at about 45-50% on the desktop...so Id very much like to double my memory, if it can be done, but the web seems to have alot of conflicting information regarding what Vista will actually register.

Anyone know definitively?

I should mention, I realize Vista 64 bit will support up to 8g, but I really am not sure if Vista 64bit is like XP 64bit in terms of application support. There was alot of compatability problems Ive read, and didnt want to deal what any of the BS, which is why I went the 32 bit route....if that is not the case however, I will glady install the 64 bit version.

[Twobit Whore]

Vista 32bit won't recognize more than ~3GB of RAM.

This should help you: Reader Question: 32-Bit Vista Memory Limits - Windows Vista help

You could drop in 2 more gigs, but you won't get it all. While it would be better than not having it at all, is it better enough to warrant buying a bunch of RAM that goes unused? Not to me, but ymmv.

[Warrik]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Vista 32bit won't recognize more than ~3GB of RAM.

This should help you: Reader Question: 32-Bit Vista Memory Limits - Windows Vista help

You could drop in 2 more gigs, but you won't get it all. While it would be better than not having it at all, is it better enough to warrant buying a bunch of RAM that goes unused? Not to me, but ymmv.

Maybe I should just get two sticks of 512 instead, giving me 3g of ram. I wouldnt mind goign 64bit, only Im still leary...

[Twobit Whore]

RAM is pretty cheap now. You can pick up a 2x1GB kit for ~100bucks. No, you may not get immediate use of it all, but when Vista 64 solidifies and you move to it, it will be like getting a free boost!

[Warrik]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

RAM is pretty cheap now. You can pick up a 2x1GB kit for ~100bucks. No, you may not get immediate use of it all, but when Vista 64 solidifies and you move to it, it will be like getting a free boost!

Good point. What sucks, is my video card has almost 1g of RAM on it, so according to the link you posted, that RAM is part of my over all allocation as well, so if I do add another 2g, I might only see 2.75 or so, depending....I really dont want to go to Vista 64 either, as the day I do, will be the day I decide Id really like to play Alpha Centauri again....

Most likely, it does make sense however, to buy the 2g as the price isnt bad at all, I just wish I could get the full utilization from having 4g of RAM plus my video RAM.

I wonder how the RAM on the X-Fi factors into the equation? Its not much, but from the sounds of it, your system has an overall 4g ceiling of RAM regardless of where its located...

[Twobit Whore]

Yeah, with a GTX you may drop down to 3GB or even under of usable RAM. This won't matter much to you though if you typically just use the computer for single apps. Most apps and games won't address more than 2GB of RAM anyway, so unless you do a lot of video editting or multitasking then it likely won't impede any performance.

[Dis]

Curious, do we have any 64-bit Vista users? My wife is using 32-bit Vista Enterprise with a 8800GTS and 2GB of RAM. No complaints so far, but I will be upgrading my computer in about a year, and would consider going to a 64bit platform, but is it worth the trouble??

[Chaotic]

I use 64 because it was recommended to be in my "build my computer" thread

Frankly I have no idea what the hell is different. I didnt know there were any negatives.

[Darus Grey]

I run Vista64(with 8gigs of ram), there isn't really any negatives.

If I wanted play an old DOS/95 game I had to run an emulator/virtualization in XP anyways so nothings changed for me.

[Drauk]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Most apps and games won't address more than 2GB of RAM anyway, so unless you do a lot of video editting or multitasking then it likely won't impede any performance.

This has nothing to do with application itself. By default, entire 4GB adress space is split in half between application and OS. Thus, under usual circumstances OS will simply will not allocate more than 2 GB for application. However with boot.ini switch you can change the split to 3/1.

4GT RAM Tuning

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Drauk

This has nothing to do with application itself. By default, entire 4GB adress space is split in half between application and OS. Thus, under usual circumstances OS will simply will not allocate more than 2 GB for application. However with boot.ini switch you can change the split to 3/1.

4GT RAM Tuning

Yes, I know you can do this, but my point was that most apps, especially games, don't use that much memory. You can allocate 100gigs, but if the software doesn't use it, it serves no purpose.

It can help on certain things, but those aren't typical programs than most people use.

[Eomer]

I've personally yet to see any game use more than about 600-700mb of RAM, and that's Supreme Commander with some fairly big maps and lots of units. Everything else is sub 500mb. Yeah yeah, OS and so on have to be counted for, but those are typically only 200-300mb. Running two Rosetta threads, encoding DVD's, serving music to my HTPC, a shitload of background apps and playing SC I've gotten my memory usage up to about 1.5gb. And the main bottleneck is still my 7800GT. This is all on XP, however, and I'm sure Vista gobbles down more memory.

I love having gobs of ram as much as the next guy, but I find the gaming/enthusiast websites often have a little too much of a hard on for memory.

[kedwyn]

I've been using 64 bit vista since its release without issues. The early parts of release had some issues with creative sound cards and a few apps but I haven't run into any issues in months. Is it worth it? You really won't see any benefits until more apps are released that are 64 bit but that is ultimately where things are going. By then though you will probably upgrade again but since there really isn't a penalty to having it now it shouldn't hurt you any.

Duo 6600
4gigs ram
8800gtx

[Zuuljin]

Originally Posted by Warrik

Good point. What sucks, is my video card has almost 1g of RAM on it, so according to the link you posted, that RAM is part of my over all allocation as well, so if I do add another 2g, I might only see 2.75 or so, depending....I really dont want to go to Vista 64 either, as the day I do, will be the day I decide Id really like to play Alpha Centauri again....

Most likely, it does make sense however, to buy the 2g as the price isnt bad at all, I just wish I could get the full utilization from having 4g of RAM plus my video RAM.

I wonder how the RAM on the X-Fi factors into the equation? Its not much, but from the sounds of it, your system has an overall 4g ceiling of RAM regardless of where its located...

I dont think the RAM on your video card takes away from the total RAM usage of the rest of the CPU does it? The video card itself takes some of the RAM, but the rest is internal to the video card to crunch numbers and push textures and whatever else. I would think it would work like NAT in a router.

[painbringer]

A 32 bit OS cannot address more than 4 gigs total. This unfortunately includes graphics and sound card memory.

If the vid card takes 768 and the sound card takes 128, you have about 3.1 gig left for system memory.

If the vid card takes 2x768 and sound card 128, you'r left with next to no gain from upgrading from 2 to 4 gig.


But, hey.. who cares. 640K is enough for everyone.