3GB or 4GB?

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igivanovg@gmail.com

I am planning to buy a new PC w/Win XP Home (32 bit), and I am
confused
as to whether it can make use of 4GB or only 3GB + a little extra.
Most of gurus out there but most of them eventually refer to

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid&id=888137

which confuses it even more :-). It says about what windows reports
to the user, but doesn't say if the balance of RAM (up to 4GB) is
actually used by the system for anything behind the scenes. In one
place I read it would be used by the integrated graphics on a system
with shared RAM (which would not be the case on the system I am
planning to buy as I'd have a dedicated video card). So I am still
unsure if spending extra $80 on 4GB vs 3GB makes any sense.

Any ideas?
 
igivanovg@gmail.com wrote:

> I am planning to buy a new PC w/Win XP Home (32 bit), and I am
> confused
> as to whether it can make use of 4GB or only 3GB + a little extra.
> Most of gurus out there but most of them eventually refer to
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid&id=888137
>
> which confuses it even more :-). It says about what windows reports
> to the user, but doesn't say if the balance of RAM (up to 4GB) is
> actually used by the system for anything behind the scenes. In one
> place I read it would be used by the integrated graphics on a system
> with shared RAM (which would not be the case on the system I am
> planning to buy as I'd have a dedicated video card). So I am still
> unsure if spending extra $80 on 4GB vs 3GB makes any sense.
>
> Any ideas?

32-bit versions of WinWhatever have a 4GB address space limit. Some of
that 4GB is used to map virtual addresses to I/O space, and the rest is
used to map virtual addresses to RAM; leaving you with 3+ GB of
addressable RAM. So spending more $s to get 4GB of RAM, of which only
3-1/4 GB (or so) is usable, may not be a wise investment. And, yes,
that other 3/4 GB of RAM is wasted (ignoring the remapping that might
be done to handle bad RAM).
--
Cheers, Bob
 
> 32-bit versions of WinWhatever have a 4GB address space limit. Some of
> that 4GB is used to map virtual addresses to I/O space, and the rest is
> used to map virtual addresses to RAM; leaving you with 3+ GB of
> addressable RAM. So spending more $s to get 4GB of RAM, of which only
> 3-1/4 GB (or so) is usable, may not be a wise investment. And, yes,
> that other 3/4 GB of RAM is wasted (ignoring the remapping that might
> be done to handle bad RAM).

Thanks Bob!

The only question remains whether the RAM dual-channel capability for
which 2x2GB is a requirement (as stated by Dell where I am looking to
buy the PC), gives a minuscule or real speed gain for the system and
is worth extra $$. I suspect the former.

--------
Igor
 
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