32bit OS RAM

[U4EA]

Physical Memory Limits: Windows 7

Unless you're running Windows 7 Starter [which I'm pretty sure you aren't], you should be alright with up to 4GB with PAE enabled:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx

edit: You will end up with something like this though:



It's no substitute for a 64 bit OS.

[Foo]

Reformat with win7 x64 bro. Very worth it.

[Foo]

A legit win7 x32 license is valid for x64 as well. Handy to know.

[obsidian]

Yeah, my Win7 comes with two discs for x32 and x64.

The way a 32-bit OS works is that it can map a maximum of 4GB worth of memory addresses, not 4GB of actual RAM. The OS usually maps some of those memory addresses to other hardware, so whatever you get left with gets mapped to RAM. So that's why if you have 4GB of actual RAM, the OS may only be able to use 3.xx GBs of it.

[Peenyuh]

192GB?!!!! How in the frak can yuh do THIS?!!!

I'm not a smart man, but I wanna know this plz.

[Foo]

What do you want to know?

[Peenyuh]

Well... it said the 64 bit has a max of 192GB of RAM... I hadn't thought more than 6 to 8. That just seems an outrageous number. You wouldn't do that for anything less than one of them super servers, would you? What kind of configuration would justify... let alone USE... that much RAM. I am confused.

[Foo]

True for now, but why set a low limit, when 64-bit allows for support of much higher amounts?

Win 7 is still going to be around in some form in 10 years time. Around 2000, 256Mb of RAM wasn't uncommon, and now 4Gb is about standard. If we project that out over the next 10 years, by 2020 we're looking at 128Gb of RAM as the standard amount shipping (probably with like a 1024-core Intel Core i5000 or whatever).

The upper limit on our big servers running 2008 R2 right now is something like 2Tb. But a more practical limitation currently is how much capacity each available RAM stick has (at the mo it's around 8Gb I think) times how many slots you have to put them in (ours have about 16 slots so can max out around 128Gb). Higher models have more slots but I dunno if any can take a full 2Tb yet. Probably.

[Peenyuh]

That makes sense. Thank you. I just moved up to 4GB in my laptop, and thought I was doin somethin. The growth in technology. I gotta think about the future more eh?

[Foo]

AMD just released 12-core processors for the server market. Should hit desktops in ~12 months

Just gotta buy what's best at the time, can't keep holding out for the next big thing (because there is always another one round the corner).

[Bacon]

don't forget ramdisk, I remember trying quake 3 on it once and when you clicked fight it was instantanious from the menu to in-game