Windows XP Pro question?

Question

Will XP read 4 GB of Ram or can I stick with 2 or 3

Answer 1

With the Vista Service Pack 1 you will now see all 4GBs of ram with 32bit Vista but thats it. It doesn't address any more ram than it did before Service Pack 1 but just shows all the ram up to 4 GBs-only reason Microsoft put that fix in was they were tired of people saying they were ripped off--paying for 4 GBs of ram and getting only 3 or so and people thinking they had puter issues when their rigs were fine. No more ram is being used than before it only shows it all.

You will see the facts supporting this is the next to last paragraph on this page:

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc...

If you have 4GBs of ram you will see around 3-3.2GBs , depending on what Windows reserves to run the sub-systems with because Windows will map the first 1 GBs or so of ram making it non-addressable unless you use I/O remapping. That's explained here:

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2007/...

Usually 2-3 Gbs of ram is plenty with 32bit XP. Hope the links help clear up any confusion.

Answer 2

No, the max memory XP will see is 3.5GB. So putting 4GB in the rig, Windows will only register 3.5GB (and all depending also, if your motherboard can accept that much memory. Some are capped at 2GB).

Vista Ultimate 32bit will recognize 4GB, and Vista Ultimate 64bit will recognize at least 8GB.

Added: yep, 3.5GB is the max memory XP will recognize.

Answer 3

The standard XP pro will use about 3.2 G of memory, due to a limitation on the number of memory page addresses available with 32 bits.

The XP 64 bit will allow you to use much much more memory but there are some programs that will not run on this version.

I always recommend using 4G of memory on a standard XP machine, particularly if you have on-board graphics, where the "spare" memory will be used by the graphics chip.  

Answer 4

Ok, the maximum amount of memory *ANY* 32-bit operating system can see is 4gb.  

Why 4gb? It's the simply highest value which can be represented using 32 bits. This limitation applies to both 32-bit Vista and 32-bit Windows XP- to see more than 4GB or memory, you need the 64-bit version of an operating system.

Now back to 32-bit Windows, which is what most people run.  Of that maximum possible 4gb, Windows (both XP and Vista) can only use between 3.2 and 3.5gb because that last gb is where hardware devices like the BIOS, video cards and PCI cards are mapped.  The exact amount varies from system to system, since it depends upon the hardware.

So for most people running 32-bit XP or Vista, there's not much point in going over 3GB since you can't use most of the 4th gigabyte.

The previous poster makes an interesting point- having 4gb on machines with integrated graphics allows them to use a portion for video memory without reducing your usable RAM.