Will my pc accept more than 3gb of RAM ?

I have an HP http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h1349.htm is a review of it.

ive upgraded it with a Geforce Gx2 1gb and 3Gbs of ram. its only a 32 bit operating system but could someone tell me if its motherboard can support the 64bit operating system or even support 3.5gigs of Ram with the 32bit OS because ive heard of some pcs that do.

I dont think that the mobo and the OS are related to each other whatsoever, so am pretty sure you can install a 64bit OS in your system.

If you install a 32bit OS the most RAM it will detect, I believe is 3.5GB. A 64bit OS will detect 4+GB

I have an HP http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h1349.htm is a review of it.

ive upgraded it with a Geforce Gx2 1gb and 3Gbs of ram. its only a 32 bit operating system but could someone tell me if its motherboard can support the 64bit operating system or even support 3.5gigs of Ram with the 32bit OS because ive heard of some pcs that do.

chriso1322

Yes you can support 64bit. 32bit can read a max of 4GB of Ram, the Graphic cards ram counts as well. So it's your 3 sticks of ram plus your 1GB graphic card ram which means it shows up as 3GB due to the card taking up its own 1GB of ram.

[QUOTE="chriso1322"]

I have an HP http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h1349.htm is a review of it.

ive upgraded it with a Geforce Gx2 1gb and 3Gbs of ram. its only a 32 bit operating system but could someone tell me if its motherboard can support the 64bit operating system or even support 3.5gigs of Ram with the 32bit OS because ive heard of some pcs that do.

zaku101

Yes you can support 64bit. 32bit can read a max of 4GB of Ram, the Graphic cards ram counts as well. So it's your 3 sticks of ram plus your 1GB graphic card ram which means it shows up as 3GB due to the card taking up its own 1GB of ram.

so if i put in another 512mb of ram, it wont accept it as ive taken up 4Gbs ?, is there anyway to get the 64bit without paying for vista again ?

I have an HP http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h1349.htm is a review of it.

ive upgraded it with a Geforce Gx2 1gb and 3Gbs of ram. its only a 32 bit operating system but could someone tell me if its motherboard can support the 64bit operating system or even support 3.5gigs of Ram with the 32bit OS because ive heard of some pcs that do.

chriso1322

You will need to have a 64-bit O/S. Then your next issue is having applications that are 64bit that can actually address the additional RAM. Technically only 3GB of RAM is recognized by your O/S but your system will address the other memory as system memory.

As for the Motherboard, the reason this plays a factor is in regards to your processor and amount of Memory support. If your processor can address a 64 bit O/S and your board can support more then 4 GB of RAM, you should be good.

Here is some detail pulled from Tech Blogger [http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx]:

Summary:
If you are running 32-bit Windows, you must live with it. You will not ever see all 4GB of RAM you've paid for.

If you are running 64-bit Windows, you may have to live with it. Depending on your motherboard's chipset, your system may support memory remapping. If so, you will be able to use all 4GB of RAM.

Detailed:
Due to an architectural decision made long ago, if you have 4GB of physical RAM installed, Windows is only able to report a portion of the physical4GB of RAM (ranges from ~2.75GB to 3.5GB depending on the devices installed, motherboard's chipset& BIOS).

This behavioris due to "memory mapped IO reservations". Those reservations overlay the physical address space and mask out those physical addresses so that they cannot be used forworking memory. This is independent of the OS running on the machine.

Significant chunks of address space below 4GB (the highest address accessible via 32-bit) get reserved for use by system hardware:

• BIOS – including ACPI and legacy video support

• PCI bus including bridges etc.

• PCI Express support will reserve at least 256MB, up to 768MB depending ongraphics card installed memory

What this means is a typical system may see between ~256MB and 1GB of address space below 4GB reserved for hardware use that the OS cannot access. Intel chipset specs are pretty good at explaining what address ranges gets reserved by default and in some cases call out that 1.5GB is always reserved and thus inaccessible to Windows.

When looking at memory in systems (be it desktop or notebook) there are three questions to ask that will tell you the maximum amount of memory your O/S will be able to use:

1. What O/S Edition have you installed?

a. 32-bit Windows is limited to a maximum of 4GB and cannot see any pages above 4GB.

b. 64-bit Windows can use between 8GB and 128GB depending on SKU.

2. What address range can your processor actually access?

a. Typically that'll be 40-bit addressing today for x64 (Intel EM64T/AMD64), but older processors may be limited to 36-bit or even 32-bit

3. Can your system's chipset map memory above 4GB?

a. Mobile chipsets on sale today cannot (but that may change with time)

b. Newer workstations (which use chipsets developed for single ormulti-proc servers) usually can.