4 GB Ram question on 32bit XP

Hey,

I have an Alienware M5750 laptop which has 2GB DDR2 ram in it now with 2 1GB sticks installed. I wanna upgrade to 4GB by replacing the 1GB sticks with 2 2GB sticks. I am currently running Windows XP Home SP2 32bit and didn't know if I was going to have problems with XP reconizing the whole 4GB and what I could do to fix the problem if it occures?

~Christopher

XP will only detect around 3.25 gig from your 4 gig.

Unfortuently the only way around this is to buy either XP x64, or Vista x64.

Not a huge vista fan. How is XP 64 as far as working with XP 32 software new and old, driver avaliability and such?

Also would there be any disadvantage to having 1 1GB stick and 1 2GB stick. not sure if Alienware configured a dual-channel setup.

XP64 is no good. If you really wnat 64-bit, go with Vista64.

But there is little reason to do so. A 64-bit OS is not beneficial without 64-bit programs. Your extra ram won't be used.

Any good reason not to mix a 1GB and 2GB stick?Chris_Yaskoski

I don't think it would run as Dual Channel

32bit's limit it 4gb of RAM in cluded in this count is all hardware's rams too e.g. if you had 2x 1gb video cards your system will be dedicate 2gbs of ram to your system, say you dont have much hardware with alot of ram then your pc could theoretically dedicate the whole 4gb of ram to your system so i think saying "32bit only see 3.2" is a big misintepretation and lack of research.yoyo462001

Umm.. no. 32 bit Windows systems have a physical limit of 4GB of memory, and will only recognize 3.12gigs of RAM without modification.

http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/08/30/32-bit-windows-and-4gb-of-ram/

[QUOTE="yoyo462001"]32bit's limit it 4gb of RAM in cluded in this count is all hardware's rams too e.g. if you had 2x 1gb video cards your system will be dedicate 2gbs of ram to your system, say you dont have much hardware with alot of ram then your pc could theoretically dedicate the whole 4gb of ram to your system so i think saying "32bit only see 3.2" is a big misintepretation and lack of research.killtheponies

Umm.. no. 32 bit Windows systems have a physical limit of 4GB of memory, and will only recognize 3.12gigs of RAM without modification.

http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/08/30/32-bit-windows-and-4gb-of-ram/

[QUOTE="killtheponies"]

[QUOTE="yoyo462001"]32bit's limit it 4gb of RAM in cluded in this count is all hardware's rams too e.g. if you had 2x 1gb video cards your system will be dedicate 2gbs of ram to your system, say you dont have much hardware with alot of ram then your pc could theoretically dedicate the whole 4gb of ram to your system so i think saying "32bit only see 3.2" is a big misintepretation and lack of research.yoyo462001

Umm.. no. 32 bit Windows systems have a physical limit of 4GB of memory, and will only recognize 3.12gigs of RAM without modification.

http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/08/30/32-bit-windows-and-4gb-of-ram/

Read your first post. Now read your second.

QED

[QUOTE="yoyo462001"][QUOTE="killtheponies"]

[QUOTE="yoyo462001"]32bit's limit it 4gb of RAM in cluded in this count is all hardware's rams too e.g. if you had 2x 1gb video cards your system will be dedicate 2gbs of ram to your system, say you dont have much hardware with alot of ram then your pc could THEORETICALLY dedicate the whole 4gb of ram to your system so i think saying "32bit only see 3.2" is a big misintepretation and lack of research.killtheponies

Umm.. no. 32 bit Windows systems have a physical limit of 4GB of memory, and will only recognize 3.12gigs of RAM without modification.

http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/08/30/32-bit-windows-and-4gb-of-ram/

Read your first post. Now read your second.

QED

saying "32bit only see 3.2" is a big misintepretation and lack of research.yoyo462001

some its 3.1 some 3.5 it differs on the hardware installedyoyo462001

[QUOTE="yoyo462001"] saying "32bit only see 3.2" is a big misintepretation and lack of research.killtheponies

some its 3.1 some 3.5 it differs on the hardware installedyoyo462001

per Micro$ofts web page http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555223,

Processes and Address Spaces

All processes (e.g. application executables) running under 32 bit Windows gets virtual memory addresses (a Virtual Address Space) going from 0 to 4,294,967,295 (2*32-1 = 4 GB), no matter how much RAM is actually installed on the computer.

In the default Windows OS configuration, 2 GB of this virtual address space are designated for each process' private use and the other 2 GB are shared between all processes and the operating system. Normally, applications (e.g. Notepad, Word, Excel, Acrobat Reader) use only a small fraction of the 2GB of private address space. The operating system only assigns RAM page frames to virtual memory pages that are in use.

Physical Address Extension (PAE) is the feature of the Intel 32 bit architecture that expands the physical memory (RAM) address to 36 bits (see KB articles 268363 and 261988). PAE does not change the size of the virtual address space, which remains at 4 GB, just the amount of actual RAM that can be addressed by the processor.

The translation between the 32 bit virtual memory address used by the code running in a process and the 36 bit RAM address is handled automatically and transparently by the computer hardware according to translation tables maintained by the operating system. Any virtual memory page (32 bit address) can be associated with any physical RAM page (36 bit address).

Here's a list of how much RAM the various Windows versions and editions support (as of Nov 2004):

Windows NT 4.0: 4 GB
Windows 2000 Professional: 4 GB
Windows 2000 Standard Server: 4 GB
Windows 2000 Advanced Server: 8GB
Windows 2000 Datacenter Server: 32GB
Windows XP Professional: 4 GB
Windows Server 2003 Web Edition: 2 GB
Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition: 4 GB
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition: 32 GB
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition: 64 GB