32-Bit Windows And 2 Gigs Beyond
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Getting 32-bit Windows to recognize anything beyond 2GB of installed RAM is a seemingly futile effort. Even if your hardware supports the possibility, the software may hold you back — and performance gains are questionable:
The reduction in available system memory depends on the devices that are installed in the computer. However, to avoid potential driver compatibility issues, the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista limit the total available memory to 3.12 GB. If a computer has many installed devices, the available memory may be reduced to 3 GB or less. However, the maximum memory available in 32-bit versions of Windows Vista is typically 3.12 GB.
So, people use a PAE switch to get past the imposed 2GB barrier. Here’s a description of the 4 GB RAM Tuning feature and the Physical Address Extension switch:
When the /3GB switch is used with Windows XP Professional, with Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition, with Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition, the /3GB switch works identically across versions. This functionality lets device-driver developers test their drivers in this configuration without having to install one of the Windows Server 2003 products just listed. The user-mode memory space is now limited to 3 GB.
Sounds good, right? Not so fast:
The /3GB switch can cause some applications to have problems that are related to address dependencies or to a reduction in kernel space.
Bottom line: if you have 4GB of RAM in your system (or more), and you want to take full advantage of it, start using a 64-bit OS.
[tags]4gb ram, computer memory[/tags]
2 Comments
Ewen
September 4th, 2007
at 1:31am
“Bottom line: if you have 4GB of RAM in your system (or more), and you want to take full advantage of it, start using a 64-bit OS.”
ONLY if your application supports it as not all applications nor all drivers are supported in (any/all) 64-bit OSes.
In fact, 64-bit on Windows for some engineering activities just wasn’t possible until recently with the recent releases of programs that are designed to work in the 64-bit environment in Windows. There are still very many that just aren’t either available, working, or stable.
OS X on the other hand no longer have the upper hand for the niche market it used to serve in digital content creation. Many of the top developers and dropped support for OS X even prior to it’s migration to using Intel processors.
As for Linux, there are no mainstream CAD applications for Linux (although there are some commercially available off the shelf software for analysis and simulation) and that the world’s fastest supercomputers run Linux (with highly proprietary programs).
Point is, switching to 64-bit OS may not be an end-all-be-all blanket statement. Considering that AMD released their 64-bit processors 4 years ago, and it’s taken this long for programs to catch on, I wouldn’t expect people to suddenly make the jump to 64-bit OSes just yet.
robert
June 15th, 2008
at 1:59pm
i agree with the last comment, if you rely on a computer for say something like graphics productivity or audio production you simply do not have the option to use a 64bit OS. Almost every single application i rely on for my job and my livelihood either is not ready yet for 64-bit usage or is extremely incompatible with the 64-bit OS and crashes and is very unstable.