OT?: Vista does work better w 4GB RAM

I upgraded my laptop memory to 4GB. The system control applet reports
3062 MB. I'm not sure, but Vista SP1 might report the full amount of
RAM.

I've noticed that my laptop is much faster now than when it had 2GB of
RAM. Programs start almost instantaneously (Word, Excel, and many
others). I guess the ultimate test would Photoshop, but I don't have
that installed.

Vista runs very fast for me. I've turned off indexing, and I turn off
Aero glass.

Memory upgrades to 4GB seem to have come down a lot in price, so it
may be worthwhile if you want some increase in performance.

Hi!

I upgraded my laptop memory to 4GB. The system control applet
reports 3062 MB. I'm not sure, but Vista SP1 might report the full
amount of RAM.

No, it definitely will not. That memory beyond 3GB will never show up
anywhere within Windows. It's a window that's carved out for adapters, AGP
apertures and the like. If you have shared memory graphics, some will go
there (although Windows might show it anyway since modern shared memory
graphics implementations appear to vary their memory demands based on what
they are doing...)

To see all 4GB, you would need a 64-bit copy of Vista.

I find it...well, sad might be too strong of a word...that Vista ran better
(and I trust what you have to say about this) with 3GB (!!!) of installed
RAM even when not under heavy load. (Debatable--I would call Vista a "heavy
load".)

William
--
Brought to you by an IBM PS/2 9585-0XF "Clarus"
Intel 486DX4/100, 2GB HDD, 64MB RAM S/N 23HD700
(...and you might cringe if told what "only 64MB" of that RAM cost new...)

On Sat, 17 May 2008 04:10:51 GMT, "William R. Walsh"
m wrote:

I upgraded my laptop memory to 4GB. The system control applet
reports 3062 MB. I'm not sure, but Vista SP1 might report the full
amount of RAM.

No, it definitely will not. That memory beyond 3GB will never show up
anywhere within Windows. It's a window that's carved out for adapters, AGP
apertures and the like. If you have shared memory graphics, some will go
there (although Windows might show it anyway since modern shared memory
graphics implementations appear to vary their memory demands based on what
they are doing...)

Hi -- maybe you can answer a question for me. Vista sees (or reports)
about 3G of RAM. If 4GB is installed, does Vista benefit from the
extra 1 GB that isn't reported? Based on what you wrote above, it
sounds like it would. I Googled this a while ago and spent a few
hours looking into it but couldn't find a good answer.

Vista does not use memory above 3GB, so it gets no benefit at all from the other
1GB. AFAIK, there is not even some sort of patch to use the added memory for
something, anything at all, as there was for Win 98 when it got above some
memory limit back in the dark days. I think that the 3GB limit is actually a
hardware-imposed limit for 32-bit systems, but the mind gets foggy when barraged
by too many facts... Ben Myers

On Sat, 17 May 2008 00:47:56 -0500, journey wrote:

On Sat, 17 May 2008 04:10:51 GMT, "William R. Walsh"
om wrote:

I upgraded my laptop memory to 4GB. The system control applet
reports 3062 MB. I'm not sure, but Vista SP1 might report the full
amount of RAM.

No, it definitely will not. That memory beyond 3GB will never show up
anywhere within Windows. It's a window that's carved out for adapters, AGP
apertures and the like. If you have shared memory graphics, some will go
there (although Windows might show it anyway since modern shared memory
graphics implementations appear to vary their memory demands based on what
they are doing...)

Hi -- maybe you can answer a question for me. Vista sees (or reports)
about 3G of RAM. If 4GB is installed, does Vista benefit from the
extra 1 GB that isn't reported? Based on what you wrote above, it
sounds like it would. I Googled this a while ago and spent a few
hours looking into it but couldn't find a good answer.

On Sat, 17 May 2008 00:02:33 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:

"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."

That's the missing link in my understanding. I was wondering why, if
Vista used some of the RAM for "hardware support / mapping", memory
below 3GB wouldn't be reduced for the same reason.

But it's the *space*, not the RAM, and the RAM goes unused. Thanks
for posting this, now I get it.

"journey" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 17 May 2008 00:02:33 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:

"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."

That's the missing link in my understanding. I was wondering why, if
Vista used some of the RAM for "hardware support / mapping", memory
below 3GB wouldn't be reduced for the same reason.

But it's the *space*, not the RAM, and the RAM goes unused. Thanks
for posting this, now I get it.

As previuosly pointed out it's memory *addresses* that are reserved for
system resources. The usual 32bit desktop operating systems can only address
4,294,967,296 memory addresses.
If you want to see what is using those addresses on your computer open
device manager and select the View - Resources by type or connection option
at the top of the window and expand the Memory group and sub groups if
relevant.

On Sat, 17 May 2008 17:21:46 +0930, "Fred" wrote:

"journey" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 17 May 2008 00:02:33 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:

"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."

That's the missing link in my understanding. I was wondering why, if
Vista used some of the RAM for "hardware support / mapping", memory
below 3GB wouldn't be reduced for the same reason.

But it's the *space*, not the RAM, and the RAM goes unused. Thanks
for posting this, now I get it.

As previuosly pointed out it's memory *addresses* that are reserved for
system resources. The usual 32bit desktop operating systems can only address
4,294,967,296 memory addresses.
If you want to see what is using those addresses on your computer open
device manager and select the View - Resources by type or connection option
at the top of the window and expand the Memory group and sub groups if
relevant.

Wow, that is so cool, I didn't know that device manager could do that.
I'll try to find a hex calculator so I can convert to base 10. Thanks!

What? You don't balance your checkbook or count change in hexadecimal? How
could you? The rest of us do... Ben Myers

On Sat, 17 May 2008 09:17:21 -0500, journey wrote:

On Sat, 17 May 2008 17:21:46 +0930, "Fred" wrote:

"journey" wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 17 May 2008 00:02:33 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:

"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."

That's the missing link in my understanding. I was wondering why, if
Vista used some of the RAM for "hardware support / mapping", memory
below 3GB wouldn't be reduced for the same reason.

But it's the *space*, not the RAM, and the RAM goes unused. Thanks
for posting this, now I get it.

As previuosly pointed out it's memory *addresses* that are reserved for
system resources. The usual 32bit desktop operating systems can only address
4,294,967,296 memory addresses.
If you want to see what is using those addresses on your computer open
device manager and select the View - Resources by type or connection option
at the top of the window and expand the Memory group and sub groups if
relevant.

Wow, that is so cool, I didn't know that device manager could do that.
I'll try to find a hex calculator so I can convert to base 10. Thanks!

Hi!

If 4GB is installed, does Vista benefit from the
extra 1 GB that isn't reported?

No, because it is completely hidden from the OS. The area where that
memory would normally be has to be kept "open" for adapters and
hardware that work by appearing somewhere within the 4GB memory
space..the computer communicates with such hardware by reading and
writing to the memory ranges that said hardware occupies.

There are tricks to work around this (such as PAE, the physical
address extension) but the terms and conditions attached to using
those methods are complicated (and may require a server edition of
Windows).

William

My favorite programming/math joke:

When is Christmas just like Halloween?

Dec 25 = Oct 31



-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Myers ]
Posted At: Saturday, May 17, 2008 9:49 AM
Posted To: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
Conversation: Vista does work better w 4GB RAM
Subject: Vista does work better w 4GB RAM

What? You don't balance your checkbook or count change in
hexadecimal?
How
could you? The rest of us do... Ben Myers

On Sat, 17 May 2008 09:17:21 -0500, journey wrote:

On Sat, 17 May 2008 17:21:46 +0930, "Fred"
wrote:

"journey" wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 17 May 2008 00:02:33 -0700, "Timothy Daniels"
wrote:

"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."

That's the missing link in my understanding. I was wondering why,
if
Vista used some of the RAM for "hardware support / mapping",
memory
below 3GB wouldn't be reduced for the same reason.

But it's the *space*, not the RAM, and the RAM goes unused.
Thanks
for posting this, now I get it.

As previuosly pointed out it's memory *addresses* that are reserved
for
system resources. The usual 32bit desktop operating systems can only
address
4,294,967,296 memory addresses.
If you want to see what is using those addresses on your computer
open
device manager and select the View - Resources by type or connection
option
at the top of the window and expand the Memory group and sub groups
if
relevant.

Wow, that is so cool, I didn't know that device manager could do
that.
I'll try to find a hex calculator so I can convert to base 10.
Thanks!