Mobo Vid card ram and stick ram?

[Tomtheman21]

I am building a new system and I have gotten advice on this forum to get vista 64-bit because it can handle 4 gigs of ram where as 32-bit can only handle 3.5 total... is this true? I have heard that vista also has a lot of problems with slow game performance and random mouse "sticking" on your monitor.

32 bit OS can only use ~3.5gb of ram total. If your doing tri-sli or tri-fire that's 1.5gb right there, leaving only 2gb for ram. If you want all of your memory to be used, get 64 bit. It can't be a waste, it's the same price.

does this make sense? i am not trying to discredit what farlex is saying i just want other opinions.

Still stickin w/ the 32-bit?, your going to be very ram limited if you do, considering your already going to have 4.5gb (vram+mem) and 32-bit can't even address that.

does the mobo share video card ram with the stick ram? I thought they were separated on the mobo

 

[Mussels]

32 bit XP/vista is stuck at closer to 3GB, and some games and apps crash if they try and pass it.

vista is often faster than XP in 3D games, except antique ones where the FPS is well over 100 anyway. never even heard of this 'mouse sticking' lol.

what farlex is saying is true: its not a 4GB limit of RAM - its address space - video card ram is included. System ram, video ram, page file - they all add up to the 4GB limit of a 32 bit OS, and cause problems when you run out.

the comment about the ram is that with 4GB of system ram and a 512MB video card, you've used 4.5GB of address space when vista/XP 32 can only access ~3.25GB of it. its wasting a lot of your ram/performance.

putting things into context: the first 32 bit OS was windows 98, and that ran fine on 64MB of ram. 32 bit is very old, and just cant handle modern ram sizes. (64 bit can go upto 128TB of ram, but we'll be going 128 bit in 10-15 years and repeating this procedure all over again)

 

[Tomtheman21]

so what your saying is 32-bit cant handle more than 3.25 gigs of RAM where as 64-bit can handle my setup perfectly?

Setup
Antec twelve hundred =$174.42
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB =$89.99
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 =$79.99
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V =$129.99-$20.00(mail in rebate)
ASUS Black 20X DVD+R =$26.99
VisionTek 900244 Radeon HD 4870 512MB 256-bit GDDR5 =$294.99
ASUS P5E LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard =$224.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz =$189.99
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit =$109.99
Thermalright TRUE Black 120 = $69.95

 

[Mussels]

yeah more or less. 32 bit is worthless on 3GB+ systems.

your system isnt that different from mine (except i've just gone 6GB ) and vista 64 runs beatifully on here.

 

[Tomtheman21]

k thanks