On Wed, 9 Jul 2008 14:39:09 -0700 (PDT), ChrisCoaster
<ckozicki@xxxxxx> wrote:
Quote:
> According to the store I bought it from, I have a 32bit version of
> Vista which will read up to 3.5gibabytes of RAM if I install two 2Gig
> sticks. In order to read all 4Gig(or 3.9), they told me I'd have to
> install a 64bit version of Vista.
>
> Is this information correct?
Approximately.
All 32-bit versions of Windows (not just Vista) have a 4GB address
space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.
But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.
Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no
address space to map it too.
Quote:
> The machine is more than fast enough for my needs now, even with
> chubby Norton AV 2007 running in the background, etc, but should I
> throw in a second 2Gig stick just to get the few extra horsepower from
> the 0.4Gig it would read?
I wouldn't. Do not assume that adding .4GB (or any amount of RAM) will
provide *any* extra horsepower. Despite how often you hear that
more RAM will increase your performance, that's true only up to a
limit, and for most people, 2GB is around that limit.
How much RAM you need for good performance is *not* a
one-size-fits-all situation. You get good performance if the amount of
RAM you have keeps you from using the page file, and that depends on
what apps you run. Most people running Vista with a typical range of
business applications find that around 2GB is fine.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
Please Reply to the Newsgroup