upgrading RAM with XP

dastrick

dastrick

huh???
My OS is Windows XP. I currently have 2 gigs of RAM, but I want to upgrade. I would like to upgrade to 4 gigs, but I read somewhere that it might actually be better to have 3 gigs with Windows XP. Something about because XP's max RAM is like 3.5 gigs or something......

Does anyone have any insight to this? Is 3 actually better than 4? :confused:

Thanks,
D :D
 
Windows XP 32 bit will only see about 3.5 gig, so it's a bit of a waste to get 4, unless you can get 2 sticks of 2 gig for a better price, just go with 3 gigs. Using 4 gigs won't hurt anything, XP just won't be able to use it all. You have to run a 64 bit operating system to use more memory.

hope this helps
 
daddymac said:
Windows XP 32 bit will only see about 3.5 gig, so it's a bit of a waste to get 4, unless you can get 2 sticks of 2 gig for a better price, just go with 3 gigs. Using 4 gigs won't hurt anything, XP just won't be able to use it all. You have to run a 64 bit operating system to use more memory.

hope this helps
Click to expand...

Not true at all. Depending on what other hardware you have in your system, 4g can be extremely useful. Every piece of hardware with it's own memory has to have the equal amount physical memory space reserved. That plus the os overhead is whats left to windows programs. So a couple of UAD's and a 512mb video hard will eat up a gig of RAM on their own. So even if you have 3 gigs, the amount available will be considerably lower (.5 for OS + 1 gb for other hardware only leaves 1.5gb for programs..)
 
I think I'm going to go for 4 gigs. I already have (2) 1 gig sticks and I'm going to add (2) more 1 gig sticks.
 
Also Many programs designed for XP are not Large Adress Aware which means they will not address more than 2 GB of RAM. THere can still be benefit to installing it since the OS etc can use additional RAM and Leave the full 2GB for the application
Also you need to make changes to the boot.ini file to use the extra RAM
 
From Microsoft:
The /3GB parameter
On 32-bit versions of Windows, the /3GB parameter enables 4-gigabyte (GB) random access memory (RAM) Tuning, a feature that enlarges the user-mode virtual address space to 3 GB and restricts the kernel-mode components to the remaining 1 GB.
What does it Mean:
Basically even if you install 4GB of RAM the OS will restrict it to 2GB for the Apps you are running and keep the rest for the Kernel components
The boot.ini change will allow the user apps to access more of the RAM addresses and leave less for Kernel components.
Bear in Mind that the MOBO also needs some of the addresses for system components too
Depending on how the MOBO is configured and what components are installed, you could see anything from 2.75-3.75 GB available to the operating system with 4GB installed. (newer MOBOs generally do a better job of allocation and leave more addressable space for RAM).

Then there are your apps
some apps are simply not designed to use more than 2GB of RAM. Older versions of cubase for example (don't know about v5) don't address anything above 2GB of RAM even if installed because they are not large address aware.

XP was not really designed for large RAM addressing. When it was developed systems typically shipped with 128 - 256 MB of RAM

For Big RAM you really need a 64 bit OS. Vista is OK but if possible hild on 'til early 2010 for windows 7
 
Bristol Posse said:
XP was not really designed for large RAM addressing. When it was developed systems typically shipped with 128 - 256 MB of RAM
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info.
But I disagree on the 128 & 256 MB RAM configs.
Two reasons :
1) RAM Pricing. Was not as cheap as today, and some 512MB and 1GB RAM singles not yet produced. PC100 & PC133 are still pricey
2) some Motherboards only supported 1 or 2GB or RAM. Sell a low RAM PC and make more $ on the upgrades of Maxing RAM
 
dastrick said:
so there will be no disadvantage to 4 GB, right?
Click to expand...


Probably not
With the radical price drop in DDR2 RAM I'd go for 2 x 2GB brand new sticks qt the fastest speed your motherboard can handle.
1) slightly lower latency than 4 x 1GB
2) No Chance of any funky behaviour from mis matched RAM (I have seen people getting unexplained BSODs when they add non matched RAM to an old system)
 
Well. My new ram is already on the way to my house. I ordered the exact same ram as I have now. I'll have 2 matched sets. Hopefully with no issues.
 
I'm no PC guru, but on my work computer, a Dell PC running XP, owned by my company, I have 3.25GB RAM and man, it is smokin' fast.
 
On my XP Pro sp2 PC the bios sees 4Gb but the computer only registers 3Gb. It fast enough for my purposes but if I'm missing out on RAM I paid for (which I'm not really sure of either way,) I'd be all ears as to how to get it up and running.
 
back in the 80's when there was just DOS, if you PC had 1 MB of RAM, you could use the 384K above 640K as a virtual disk drive.
I wonder if there is such a thing with XP ?
If so, you could make use of it for cache-ing current recording, instead of disk

I have a Vista Duo Core 2 1.5 Ghz laptop with 2.5GB and it's quite fast. Convert a WAV to MP3 of 4 minutes in 3 sec. VST's use 1 or 2% CPU each, sometimes less than 1%, compared to my Pentium 4 1.5Ghz, same VST are 20 to 40% CPU

HD_Dude - The DELL XP with 3.25GB RAM is super fast mainly becuase it doesn't need to cache RAM / Swap-to-disk
 
I got it

Sooo.......I got my 2 gigs of RAM in today. :D:D What do I need to do before I install it? Or, is there a link that someone knows about to guide me?

Thanks,
D
 
I stuck my 2 extra gigs in and booted back up. Works great. BIOS sees all 4 gigs and Windows says 3.24 GB of RAM. From what I read, this is pretty normal. Anything else that I can/should do?
 
dastrick said:
I stuck my 2 extra gigs in and booted back up. Works great. BIOS sees all 4 gigs and Windows says 3.24 GB of RAM. From what I read, this is pretty normal. Anything else that I can/should do?
Click to expand...

Nope that's pretty much it unless you run a 64 bit XP. Have fun with the new RAM.:D
 
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