what happens if i use 4gb ram on vista 32bit?

Hi

from what i've read,Vista 32 bit can only use 3gb ram. my laptop has 4gb ram. so what happens to the other 1gb? does it get used for anything or do i just have 1gb ram lying redundant

thanks

 

I don't think that it will even be used because Vista 32bit and only utilize 3Gb of ram.

 

The last ~1GB of RAM is completely unused.

 

More like .8 ram unused. You might get up to 3.2 gb ram used.

 

To see how much RAM is really usable: open Task Manager (shift-ctrl-Esc) > Performance tab

You should see: Physical Memory (MB): Total: ________
Divide by 1024 to get gigabytes.

 

Yeah unless you use 64-bit you will only be able to use about 3-3.5 GB of ram. In my case I get just under 3.5 GB in 32-bit

 

Yea For me too its saying 3.52GB of total ram , you may ask why i didn't upgrade to 64bit ... I have customized my Vista a lot and installed a lot of stuff , so i don't want to do it all over again

But Ubuntu is very happy to use them all

 

so its completely unused?

if i use vista 64, do i have to buy programs specially written for 64 bit? or is it just drivers

 

Yes.
32-Bit Programs will be compatible with Vista 64, but you'll need 64-bit drivers....probably from the notebook or device manufacturer's site.

Upgrade to Vista 64, if the current RAM config (~3GB) is bottlenecking the performance of the system. Otherwise, utilizing the extra 1GB won't boost performance in anyway.

 

Yes. The reason is, fundamentally, because the chipset you have (and that most notebooks have) only has a logical address space of 4GB - that means your system only has 4GB's worth of logical addresses it use to assign to anything that the CPU needs to talk to, including GPUs, USB devices, hdds, etc, etc,.... Whatever's left over, which will necessarily be less than 4GB, gets assigned to bytes of physical RAM.

Now, whether or not the exact same bytes of physical RAM always get left out and have to sit on the sidelines, I do not know.

 

You can run 32-bit programs fine. Only drivers are required to be 64-bit. But 64-bit Vista drops support for 16-bit programs, so some really old programs or those with outdated enough code may not work. But most 32-bit programs work fine.

 

A lot like Shyster said (remember that means lawyer=don't trust).

The only add on I would say is with 32bit the theoretical max is 4GB's. So My point is it is not the chipset per se. On a 32bit it is 4GB's memory addresses (not the same as RAM). 64bit is limited by both chipset an OS.

Edit: Had no idea so active! PAE is crap do not try unless you know what you are doing? If you have to ask you don't know. It really is becoming offensive when brought up.

 

lol, didn't know that this opens the task manager

mine shows a bit more than 2900 MB in there

 

i really can't feel a x64 bit system if it runs little or no x64 programs at all .. *sigh. future is SooO far away

 

No worries; my view is, don't trust anything or anyone you cannot independently verify or, as RR used to say, "trust, but verify. ( Доверяй, но проверяй)."

 

*****BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*****

there goes your laptop...

 

rofl@lokster

ok some more questions.

1) i like to play old games, such as tiberian sun. will they work?
2) if i use an emulator, i can still run dos programmes right?
3) am i right in understanding that the problem mainly lies with drivers, rather than apps?

thanks

 

my notebook supports up to 8gb ram, so i doubt the chipset is a limitation.

one more question:

does dell and other hardware manufacturers typically have a better record on 64 bit driver updates or is 32 bit drivers the ones that always come out first and are more optimised?

thanks

 

The 945 chipset and before, could not use 4GB.
But the 965 chipset and the new platforms, can use more than 4GB RAM.

 

As others said, the upper 1GB would be unused but you will get a slight speed boost from having dual channel RAM (2GBx2)