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How much RAM do you have on your PC?
Lashiec:
Hey, I was working with a computer with an astounding 80K of RAM during the 90s...
mwb1100:
PAE won't necessarily get you back the missing bit of your 4GB - it depends on whether or not the motherboard makes the RAM that would 'overlay' the address space reserved for devicea available in a different area of the physical address space. My guess is that virtually none do, so you lose that 512-768MB regardless of PAE or a 64-bit OS. If anyone knows for certain of a desktop motherboard that supports mapping the missing RAM above the 4GB address space, please post details.
For gory details on this:
The proper solution to this whole conundrum is to use a 64-bit operating system. However, even with a 64-bit OS, you'll still be at the mercy of your motherboard's chipset and BIOS; make sure your motherboard supports using 4 GB or more of memory...
-http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html
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If you're lucky, your PC will be able to do something clever. The usual solution is to make that last gigabyte appear further up in the memory map. So your memory map looks like this...
...
How can you know which kind of motherboard to buy in order to avoid this? Right now it's not all that easy to tell actually, short of reading the datasheets for the chipset... If the mobo can take more than 4GB of memory, then you might be OK. Although they might just take the attitude of "If you can afford to fit 32GB of memory, you can afford for 1GB to go missing"...-http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/2005/08/05/is3gbenough
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Also, note that none of this has anything to do with the /3GB switch or the amount of memory available to applications, since they deal with virtual memory not physical memory (unless the application is specifically written to take advantage of the PAE APIs in windows, which pretty much none do except for the industrial-strength databases).
f0dder:
I haven't relaly seen any disadvantages from turning on PAE; you can turn on PAE but still have DEP only set for the "critical system services". I've been running with DEP for everything for a while now, haven't seen any incompatibilities yet, and haven't felt a speed hit either (but I haven't done any benchmarking of it, and I do have NX-capable hardware so it's not emulated).
masu:
I have now updated my PC with 2GB RAM, and the speed increase is really noticable, even under Windows Desktop
Thanks for your advice :Thmbsup:
Cynic:
4 GB - though I'm on XP so only get 3.25. But at the prices these days why have less?-katykaty (September 17, 2007, 02:19 PM)
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My thought exactly, though it was a little frustrating at the time of purchase :)
-cranioscopical (September 17, 2007, 02:35 PM)
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A bit OT:
I also have 4GB of RAM installed, and 32 bit XP only sees 2.93 GB. No surprises here, I suppose.
What's puzzling me is that when I go to the BIOS, the motherboard only sees 3008 MB as well. Shouldn't it see all 4 GB? Even if one the four 1 GB modules wasn't working correctly, I should have at least 3072 MB, right? Why only 3008?
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