Upgrading Memory

[DannyNSandy]

Hello I want to upgrade my 2 G vista machine too 4 G and I'm wondering if all RAM will work with vista? Thanks

[Meech]

RAM is specific to your hardware, not software.

checkout www.crucial.com

[DannyNSandy]

Yea knew that. Just wasn't sure.

[buckslayer80]

Windows won't recognize above 2 GB RAM without a switch unless you are running a 64 bit version of Vista. Windows can't use the extra RAM, but your applications can. That's a a summary of the detailed way Windows handles RAM. When you install 4 GB, the BIOS will see it all but under properties of My Computer you will only see around 2.25 GB.

[LuckyTxGuy]

Buckslayer is right....however, I was thinking it was around 3-3.5GB that was the max 32 bit versions would actually be able to see and use? Not sure one that though.

[LuckyTxGuy]

Ok here is some info on the topic.

Vista RAM info

[orentha]

64-bit versions of Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate: 128GB

sweet. lol

[buckslayer80]

[ QUOTE ]
Buckslayer is right....however, I was thinking it was around 3-3.5GB that was the max 32 bit versions would actually be able to see and use? Not sure one that though.

[/ QUOTE ]

the switch should let you see 3.25. Without it it should show 2.25.

[Beavis68]

32-bit application can use up to 4Gb if your hardware supports it.

[Beavis68]

Great link Tx. I should have read it before I posted, here is a key section.
[ QUOTE ]

I thought this was a slam-dunk, but it turns out to be a damn good question! The short answer is, the practical upper limit is usually about 3GB of RAM.
The long answer takes some explanation… Here’s the official answer from Microsoft:

32-bit versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate: 4GB
32-bit Windows Vista Starter: 1GB
64-bit versions of Windows Vista Home Basic: 8GB
64-bit versions of Windows Vista Home Premium: 16GB
64-bit versions of Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate: 128GB
So I search around a little to find some real-world experiences for people with 4GB installed:


This guy had 3.2GB available.
People here had 2GB, 3.58GB, and 3GB available.
This guy had 2.5 GB.
And this guy had 2.8GB available.
This paper from HP helps explain it–the platform can theoretically support the full 4GB, but your hardware is going to allocate some of the address space (not the physical RAM) to the PCI bus, the video adapter memory address space, and other resources. 32-bit OSs need to use part of the full 4GB address space to address these resources, subtracting from the maximum memory you have available to the OS and applications:
The PCI memory addresses starting down from 4 GB are used for things like the BIOS, IO cards, networking, PCI hubs, bus bridges, PCI-Express, and video/graphics cards. The BIOS takes up about 512 KB starting from the very top address. Then each of the other items mentioned are allocated address ranges below the BIOS range. The largest block of addresses is allocated for today’s high performance graphics cards which need addresses for at least the amount of memory on the graphics card. The net result is that a high performance x86-based computer may allocate 512 MB to more than 1 GB for the PCI memory address range before any RAM (physical user memory) addresses are allocated.

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