Oh man...I just did the same upgrade but with 4 x 1GB. Caveat Emptor: get
1 for the price of 2!

Really, though: thanks for this very useful information. I knew 4GB was
the max on 32 bit, but did not know about Vista's limitations...

Ready for an easy question? I've got a system with an Intel Pentium 4 3.0
Ghz processor...um...would it run Vista64? (running and hiding now)

Thanks again



"Scrivener" wrote in message
...
Hi, Ken:

I've enjoyed reading your posts.

I have a laptop with three gigs of SDRAM housed in two slots: Slot 1, 2
gigs; Slot 2, 1 gig. I've ordered a two-gig strip to put in the Slot 2,
which now has the 1gig installed. If I'm understanding you correctly,
you're indicating that it won't "help" the system and applications much
beyond my 3 gigs? If that's the case, I wasted my money purchasing the 2
gig for the second slot? (Live & Learn) If so, no big deal, except it
proves once again my ignorance on the subject, and that I should have done
more research.

As an aside, when I check this machine's performance - I'm running Vista
Ultimate - it shows approximately 1.1 gig used, 1.9 gig not used. I was
hoping to make that 2.1 unused.

Thanks, again, for any thoughts on this.

Ernie



"Ken Blake, MVP" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 10:56:01 -0800, ICQM Houston
wrote:

vista 32-bit can only recognize 3 GB even if you installed higher than 3
BG
RAM size total.


No, that's not exactly correct.

All 32-bit versions of Windows (not just XP) have a 4GB address space.
That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.

You can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you have a
4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM. That's
because some of that space is used by hardware and not available to
the operating system and applications. The amount you can use varies,
depending on what hardware you have installed, but is usually around
3.1GB.

Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no
address space to map it too.



vista 64-bit can have it all sizes of RAM -


And that's not even close to correct. The amount varies with the
version of 64-bit Vista. It's 8GB with Home Basic, 16GB in Home
Premium, and 128GB in the other versions.


i had so far
tested
8GB on a desktop workstation tunning vista 64 and no problem

"Ian D" wrote:


"tony2tones" wrote in message
...

I've upgraded my ram from 2GB to 4GB...the bios reports 4096 but
Vista
reports 2048...the exact same value before the upgrade. I'm aware
of
why Vista doesn't report all of the add'l memory but in my case I
see no
change at all...does any one have any ideas? Thanks!


--
tony2tones

Make sure the memory remap or similar feature is not enabled in
your BIOS. This is for use with 64 bit OSs only, and the results
with a 32 bit OS are unpredictable. Showning only 2 GB of 4 GB
installed was the result I got with WinXP when the remap was
enabled for 64 bit Vista.




--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
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