4gb of RAM on XP 32-bit?

Machin3

Machin3

New Member
Hey all. Last night I was building a pc and I have 4 gb's of Fatal1ty RAM and when i placed it in last nice, BIOS read as 4gb but then when I added the HDD with XP 32-bit, it only ran 2.75gb. I called up the manufacterer and they said that because of 32-bit, it could only run 3 gigs max. Is this true? If not how do I get 4gb's on 32-bit? Thanks alot. :D
 
Windows 32 bit can only allocate a certain amount of memory to your address lines. Depending on your BIOS, various amounts of memory maybe shown. 2.75 is weird because of the time it will show 3gb or 3.25gb, because it is uses memory to map external and internal devices. It is mapped in I/O.
 
i think you can approach 4gb of ram on a 32-bit system, but if you reach 4gb then your smallest stick of ram won't be used. if you have 1 2gb, 1 1gb, 1 512mb, and 1 256mb stick of ram your computer will recognize all 3.75gb.

2^32 bytes is 4gb.
 
Using 2,816 megabytes (2.75 gigabytes) of RAM with Windows XP 32-bit is very likely more than enough memory for whatever you are using your system for. 2.75 gigabytes of RAM is a lot of memory especially with a Windows XP 32-bit operating system.
 
Destructo said:
i think you can approach 4gb of ram on a 32-bit system, but if you reach 4gb then your smallest stick of ram won't be used.
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Where did you come up with that. Xp 32bit can see up to 4gbs. Hardware addresses eat up some memory and what ever is left over is available to the OS. Makes no difference what size sticks you run or what order. You can put 4gbs. or 8gbs. and the same amount will show in XP 32bit. windows.
 
Last edited:
Are you sure?
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I don't think very many people are using an OS that enabling PAE on will actually make a difference other than allowing NX to work though (OSX on a Mac Pro or Xserve, Windows Server editions, FreeBSD but there are some issues, Linux kernel 2.6 or newer, or Solaris which also has issues).
 
Interesting..........Midnight says he only see's 2.7 gig. Im using XP Pro 32 bit and does show 3.5 gig. I heard it will still use the 4gig. not sure. just another article somewhere. Have a question though.

Slot zero and slot one.
i traded computers with my daughter. mine was Toshiba laptop.
Her's tower intel motherboard 3 gig processor and 800 fsb.
1 drive and one burner. 512meg mem.

i took out the 512 and installed ddr mem 3gig. my question is. what were my options. if i installed 2 gig. for best performance would i install 1 gig in bank zero and one in bank 1?

Or both in bank zero.

On the otherhand. can i install the 512 if bank zero is full with 1 gig and 512 in bank 1.

thanks
 
Cromewell said:
I don't think very many people are using an OS that enabling PAE on will actually make a difference other than allowing NX to work though (OSX on a Mac Pro or Xserve, Windows Server editions, FreeBSD but there are some issues, Linux kernel 2.6 or newer, or Solaris which also has issues).
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You forgot Windows XP prior to SP2
 
You forgot Windows XP prior to SP2
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The list was OSs that will give you more than 4GB of address space if you enable PAE, Windows XP doesn't fall into that category :)
Interesting..........Midnight says he only see's 2.7 gig. Im using XP Pro 32 bit and does show 3.5 gig. I heard it will still use the 4gig. not sure.
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It's dependant on the hardware configuration. It's almost always 3GB +/- 0.5GB but I have heard of cases where people only have about 2GB of address space, no first hand experience with it being that low though.
 
I think we are saying the same thing but not understanding each other. 32bit Windows XP never has supported more than 4GB of address space even with PAE.

Operating system Maximum memory support with PAE
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
8 GB of physical RAM

Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
32 GB of physical RAM

Windows XP (all versions)
4 GB of physical RAM*

Windows Server 2003 (and SP1), Standard Edition
4 GB of physical RAM*

Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
32 GB of physical RAM

Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition
64 GB of physical RAM

Windows Server 2003 SP1, Enterprise Edition
64 GB of physical RAM

Windows Server 2003 SP1, Datacenter Edition
128 GB of physical RAM

* Total physical address space is limited to 4 GB on these versions of Windows.
 
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe because of the way XP allocates RAM usage, you don't see much benefit after 2GB. Something along the lines that it only allocates a maximum of 2GB towards applications and 2GB towards the OS.
 
Cromewell said:
I think we are saying the same thing but not understanding each other. 32bit Windows XP never has supported more than 4GB of address space even with PAE.
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It has. Check this kb...

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx

Windows XP: 4 GB of physical RAM
Windows XP SP2 and later: 4 GB of physical address space

They changed in SP2 how they define "4GB"

PohTayToez said:
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe because of the way XP allocates RAM usage, you don't see much benefit after 2GB. Something along the lines that it only allocates a maximum of 2GB towards applications and 2GB towards the OS.
Click to expand...

2GB (by default) for each application.
 
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