upgrading ram questions

S

Sean89

New Member
Hey I've got an Alienware area 51 m9750 notebook, I'm running windows vista home premium service pack 1, 32bit. At the moment I've got 1gig of ram and it seems horrible right now if thats what is causing me to not be able to multi task well. Listening to music while browsing the internet etc. I wanna upgrade the ram to 4gig if possible, now I called Alienware and they said I can upgrade to 4gig and 32bit will actually use it just that it'll show I've only got 3.25gigs or something along that. Now is it worth even upgrading to 4gigs or just get 2? I look at it that if I upgrade to 4 I've got that extra if needed where as 2gigs just might be like 1 since it doesn't seem like I'm upgrading much.
 
Sean89 said:
I can upgrade to 4gig and 32bit will actually use it just that it'll show I've only got 3.25gigs .
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NO! it is not phisicaly possible to EVER use more RAM than 32bit can address. That woud be somwere betwin 3.0gb to 3.5gb in the best scenario. That means, even if you install 4GB of ram, you win never be able (using 32bit OS) to see OR use more then about 3,2 GB of it. You will do just fine istalling 3gb.
 
cRABu said:
NO! it is not phisicaly possible to EVER use more RAM than 32bit can address. That woud be somwere betwin 3.0gb to 3.5gb in the best scenario. That means, even if you install 4GB of ram, you win never be able (using 32bit OS) to see OR use more then about 3,2 GB of it. You will do just fine istalling 3gb.
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its a laptop wouldnt it only have 2 dualchannel slots?
 
yes. most likely it has only 2 slot. maybe not dual channel. Anyway using 1gb of ram in one slot, and in the other 2gb(single channel), is better then using only 2gb amout on dual channel.
 
Try getting the same type of ram another 2bg, or if you cant do that, just go for 2 or 3gb of ram. XP cannot acess 4GB.
 
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