Re: Installed 4 GB of memory; only able to use 3,406,240 Bytes
- From: "Ken Blake, MVP" <kblake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:35:30 -0700
On Wed, 8 Oct 2008 12:03:01 -0400, "Charles Elliott"
<elliott.ct@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I installed 4Gb of memory under WinXP, but Task Manager indicates only
3,406,240 bytes are available for use. Does anyone know why that is? Is there any way to
get WinXP to use the full 4GB?
No, there is not.
All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) 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.
By the way, why did you install so much? Regardless of the point
above, it's very rare that an XP user needs or can make effective use
of even the 3,406,240 bytes that you get.
--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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