I don't think so. 32-bit OSes can only address 4GB RAM. The thing is that your video card RAM, BIOS, etc have to map into that 4GB address space also. That is why you lose approx 750MB RAM when you have 4GB. The RAM is still there, it is just not addressed.
Kind of like this: Physical RAM Memory Mapping |----- 4GB |----- 4.00GB | | Graphics card memory, BIOS, etc. | |----- 3.25GB | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Bobby -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thane Sherrington Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 8:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [H] RAM ceiling 3.25GB ...maybe not At 04:15 AM 08/03/2008, Winterlight wrote: >This is in this months Maximum PC page 23 sidebar. > >------------------------------------------- >Our RAM configuration isn't that simple, though. Although the board >posts just fine with 4GB, running a 32-bit windows OS doesn't quite >give you full access to the RAM. Check Windows XP and it'll report >only 3.25GB free. So is the other .75GB wasted? Not quite. It's a >complicated issue, but Microsoft argues that even if the >applications cannot use all 4GB of RAM, the OS, and even the >drivers, will, so the additional headroom does help. >------------------------------------------- Side question on this. If I had 8GB of RAM, and 32 bit XP, could I create a 5GB RAM drive, and use it for temp and swap files while still using the other 3GB for Windows? Wouldn't that give me, in effect, the advantage of 8GB of RAM since I'd be paging at RAM speed? T
