Re: Can XP cope with 2gb of RAM
- From: Tim Slattery <Slattery_T@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 12:48:51 -0400
Bob I <birelan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi there...the original poster said he uses Windows XP Home Edition. People
responded saying 'XP can handle 4GB of RAM'. I have been finding conflicting
information on the web and it's extraordinarily difficult to get a straight
answer on the RAM maximum for XP Home. So, I'll ask here and someone please
give me a direct answer, ok? ;)
Can Windows XP --->***HOME***<---- use 4GB of RAM, or is the maximum amount
different from XP Pro?
Home and Pro both can address 4GB of memory. But that address space is
used for system RAM, and for memory and registers on your video board
and other add-in boards. Therefore, if you install 4GB in your
machine, WinXP (both home and pro) will not see the entire thing.
Look at this document:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/b/a/eba1050f-a31d-436b-9281-92cdfeae4b45/mem-mgmt.doc
On page ten is this paragraph:
<QUOTE>
The physical address space is used to address more than just RAM. It
is also used to address all of the memory and some of the registers
presented by devices. Consequently, if a machine is configured with
the maximum amount of physical memory, some of that memory will be
unusable because some of the physical address space is mapped for
other uses.
</QUOTE>
I only ask because like I said, the web gives conflicting info and I almost
wiped my OS again for XP Pro (after buying XP Home) because I only see 3GB of
RAM with the /3GB switch in the boot.ini. I also read on the Microsoft site
that the /3GB switch wouldn't work with XP Home even though I have it running
this way.
The /3GB switch has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with physical memory. It
controls the way that the 4GB virtual address space that each process
has is divided between user program and operating system. Using the
/3GB switch can help some extremely RAM-hungry programs to run (and
they are *very* rare), but it does so at the cost of strangling the
OS.
--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)
Slattery_T@xxxxxxx
.
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