Any problems with 4GB in 32 bit Vista/XP besides only ~3.2GB?

[Water Drop]

I am gonna build a new system soon and I plan on dual booting XP Pro 32 Bit and Vista Ultimate 32 Bit (for now). Eventually I will dual boot XP 32 bit and Vista 64 bit. I am wondering if there is any problems having 4GB of ram in 32 bit Vista or XP. I know that you can only see about 3.2GB or whatever it is in a 32 bit OS, but I want to know if any other issues will arise. Is performance better with 4GB (2x2GB or 4x1GB) in 32 Bit Windows XP/Vista than with 2GB (2x1GB) or is it about the same? Anyone have 4GB and running a 32 Bit OS that could let me know?

If anyone cares this system will be using a P35 board, a Core 2, and a 8800GT.

 

[ShadowFold]

If you have to do 4gb do 2gb x 2.. 4x 1gb = less performance(no dual channel) and cant OC them very well.

 

[erocker]

You certainly can run 4 x 1gb sticks in dual-channel!

 

[Steevo]

When you excede the 2GB boundary for a 32bit OS like XP the page table double in size and it will cause a slowdown in access to the memory. You can however add a switch like "/burnmem 2000" to your boot command line and limit XP to 2GB of ram access, still allowing it 1GB for kernel addressable space, plus whatever is on your video cards.

 

[ShadowFold]

You certainly can run 4 x 1gb sticks in dual-channel!

Theres quad channel now??

 

[Homeless]

It's not a problem with seeing 4gb of ram, it's allocating it. As you already know, a 32 bit OS cannot handle 4 gigs of ram, but I don't think any issues should arise by having that much. I believe it is better to run two sticks of ram opposed to four as four sticks is forced to run in 2T (my info may be a little dated)

 

[erocker]

No the two sticks in channel A will run dual channel, and the two sticks in channel B, will run dual channel.

 

[JrRacinFan]

It's not quad channel, it's symmetric and asymmetric dual channel. Quad channel won't be out until Nehalem IIRC.

 

[Water Drop]

Well yes I plan on doing 2x2GB most likely so I can keep the other slots free for 8GB later on

 

[Water Drop]

Is 32 Bit Vista much better at handling 4GB of ram then 32 bit XP?

 

[Solaris17]

It's not quad channel, it's symmetric and asymmetric dual channel. Quad channel won't be out until Nehalem IIRC.

though quad channel is currently available on workstation boards.

 

[strick94u]

Theres quad channel now??

Some boards can run dual channle with all slots filled my 680i says it can my old 939 will only run dual channle with 4 sticks of ram that match if you use 2 it will run single. It depends on the board.

 

[JrRacinFan]

though quad channel is currently available on workstation boards.

Thanks for the correction. Sometimes I do need to be smacked around ... LOL

 

[CrackerJack]

i once had 4gb (4x1gb) on my sapphire board. which it made a little bit of a difference. they ran i dual channel. i couldn't oc the ram no more than 215. I had to run the cpu at 220 and just the ram to 200. but even then the ram would run at 215. i would crashes about every 2 to 3 hours. but at stock speeds there was no big difference in performance. I ran 3dmark05 and performance test.

 

[Hitsugaya_Toushirou]

Well, theoretically a 32-bit OS does support 4GiB of RAM (2^32 = 4*1024^3) and from what i remember reading on another forum about this topic, people were able to allocate 4GiB of physical address space and get all 4GiB of RAM detected. My memory isn't too great so i don't remember in great detail but i do remember that you just had to turn on (or was it off) memory remapping (from the BIOS, i think it was). This allowed the people on that forum to get access to all 4GiB of RAM from 32-bit Windows XP/Vista and Linux OSs. If you wan't more than 4GiB of RAM you'll either have to get Windows 2003 Server Edition (which is 36-bit) or Windows XP/Vista 64-bit (Though 64-bit XP/Vista only support 128GiB of RAM even though the maximum capacity is much high, 2^64 bytes of RAM).

Just as a note in case you might not understand the 36-bit thing; Before Intel and AMD started producing 64-bit CPUs the CPUs before were in actual fact 36-bit CPUs, which had a maximum RAM of 64GiB (2^36 = 64*1024^3), which was used in the server editions(All 64GiB was detectable).

 

[Deleted member 3]

I'm running 4GB with 6 DIMM's currently, quad channel and on a 32bit OS. No issues here. Though hardware support is of course a requirement. The required PAE does include a performance hit though.

 

[Morgoth]

It's not quad channel, it's symmetric and asymmetric dual channel. Quad channel won't be out until Nehalem IIRC.

Nehalem desktop cpu's wil only support dual channel and triple channel (talking abouth Highend CPU's with intergrated memmory controller *LGA 1366*)
the server version wil support quad channel *Beckton*
DDR3 and higher

 

[Water Drop]

So would you guys say its worth going with 4GB if I'm mostly gonna run 32 Bit Vista? Or should I stick with a 2GB kit for now?

Basically I want to know if 4GB of ram will be faster in games under Vista 32 Bit then 2GB of ram will be. I plan on getting probably an E8400, a P35 chipset based board, and a 8800GT.

 

[Morgoth]

go for 4gb if you use programms that use large amount of ram like game tools ect
i'm getting soon another 1gb for my system now i have 3gb but it wil limit me to around 3500mb
cus of 32bit only support 4gb maxium inc videocard memmory

 

[tzitzibp]

go for 4gb if you use programms that use large amount of ram like game tools ect

I agree.... go for 4gb, prefferably 2x2gb.

speed depends on memory timings and fsb....and voltage tolerance.

 

[candle_86]

Theres quad channel now??

if there is 4 slots on a dual channel board in effect yes if you want to think of it that way. There is 1 dual channel controller per 2 slots so with 4 you get 2 controllers. its still 128bit and as for problems with it that hasnt been an issue for intel ever and AMD after the E6 revision chips in 2005

 

[Water Drop]

Ok, thanks guys. I will be going 2x2GB then. I'm considering DDR2-800 4GB (2x2GB) kits. I'm gonna try and get CAS4, but if its DDR2-1000 or so then I can see going CAS5 possibly. I will be OCing the E8400 to hopefully around 4Ghz (unless I go for a Quad, which probably won't hit as high. So what do you guys think? OCZ Reapers, Patriot Vipers, G.Skill, or what would you recommend? It's gotta work on a Gigabyte P35 board or possibly a Abit IP35/Pro, not sure quite yet.

 

[tzitzibp]

Ok, thanks guys. I will be going 2x2GB then. I'm considering DDR2-800 4GB (2x2GB) kits. I'm gonna try and get CAS4, but if its DDR2-1000 or so then I can see going CAS5 possibly. I will be OCing the E8400 to hopefully around 4Ghz (unless I go for a Quad, which probably won't hit as high. So what do you guys think? OCZ Reapers, Patriot Vipers, G.Skill, or what would you recommend? It's gotta work on a Gigabyte P35 board or possibly a Abit IP35/Pro, not sure quite yet.

go for a 8400.... and oc the crap out of it....

 

[Water Drop]

Yeah that's what I was planing on. Not sure about what kind of ram to get now.

Patriot Viper DDR2-800 CAS4 (4GB, 2x2GB)
http://clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4354088

What about these two OCZs? Also same specs as the Patriots
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227270
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227267

Theres some Geils that have the same specs too, the Estorias or something like that. What's the best out there. What do you recommend?

 

[tzitzibp]

try to find Transend AXE 1200Mhz, or at least AXE 1066Mhz