4GB RAM in Windows?
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For months, I’ve had people asking about the 4GB vs 2GB RAM scenario. The answer isn’t all that simple when it comes to 32-bit flavors of Windows, but despite the language barrier, Aqud does his best to explain it to the community again:
Windows addresses a maximum of 3,37GB at my server, this was due to DEP (Data Executing Prevention) who uses up a few of the 4GB addressable addresses. To expand the addresses you can make advantage of PAE (Physical Address Extension). With PEA windows “supports” up to 8GB of RAM. At windows 2k3 server this option goes on by default at inserting for 4GB ram. This allows windows to make use of ALL the 4096MB’s. What doesn’t change is the kernel mode. Windows has a built-in maximum of 2GB for kernel mode. By using the /3GB switch the kernel mode even gets decreased to 1GB. Even with PAE and 8GB of memory the kernel mode doesn’t use more then 2GB (or 1GB with the /3GB switch on). This is why a Windows terminal server has a maximum of a couple of hundred users, even if it could use 32GB of ram, since the kernel mode wont use more then 2GB. Only solution to this problem is using x64. For your problem, just turn on PAE and its solved. You can turn on PAE by using the /PAE switch at boot.ini, you can also turn of DEP to decrease the amount of used memory mappings, but it will still use a few.
9 Comments
The Chris Pirillo Show
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
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Lumpy's Corner
November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am
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John Lesnak
June 30th, 2007
at 6:27pm
What did he say?
BHUPZ
July 2nd, 2007
at 3:40am
basically there are soo many options of using a 64 bit platform i wouldnt know why you would want to use more than 3gb or even 2gb ram on a x86 platform. with 2 gb ram any x86 platform rocks and with all that memory it is hard to even use all of it. i knw cuz i installed 4gb of ram in my amd machine. x64 rocks but long way away from being ready. windows xp rocks and will do until it slowly dies away.
I-user
July 3rd, 2007
at 5:04pm
What about us po’ folk with laptops that only expand to 2gb ram max. (still quite common in the market)?!? 4gb+ and 64bit is really a waste of money for us!
sanjay
July 3rd, 2007
at 8:10pm
what the hell is this about? I mean if we wanted white papers wouldn’t we be reading them in the first place? This is not only not useful to anyone who wants to do anything about memory addressing, but honestly, what’s the point of this mental machination? It says nothing practical to anything about anyone.
Malignedtruth
July 4th, 2007
at 9:02am
Whenever the discussion becomes too technical for you Sanjay, just insert the word ‘Pants’ as a substitute for any of the big words.
“This allows windows to make use of ALL the (Pants). What doesn’t change is the (Pants) mode. Windows has a built-in maximum of 2GB for (Pants) mode. By using the /3GB switch the (Pants) mode even gets decreased to 1GB.”
Makes sense, actually! Let’s substitute calories for all references to GB. Even funnier, and easier to comprehend!
At least it will give you a laugh. The rest of us enjoy the depth of discord, because we are rocket scientists. Technical discussions? Big words? Amazing concepts? Bring it on!
I prefer to run my Athlon 64 on a diet of FOSS using Mepis64 bit GNU/Linux. It’s faster. More secure. Most stable. FREE.
Steven Michaels
November 5th, 2007
at 2:07pm
Pirillo is one cool dude ! He is the hippest “geek” I’ve ever seen.
Arkadiy
April 9th, 2008
at 11:58am
Folks
I have a very very basic question. We cant use 4GIG because memory is taken up by devices so we may end up with 3GIG or less. Totally understand.
1) What does this have to do with 4GIG? If i had 3gig, would not same 1GIG be taken away? How will 64bit OS help here unless i increase above 4GIG? Can you please let me know - i am trying to decide whether to get 4gig in new PC on 32bit Vista, but i am afraid of getting 64bit OS…
Thanks,
Arkadiy