Question on Available RAM - Win7 32-bit vs. 64-bit


  1. irobot
    Posts : 11
    Windows 7 Professional 32bit
       New #1

    Question on Available RAM - Win7 32-bit vs. 64-bit


    Hi all -

    Why is there a 4gb RAM limit with Win7 32-bit?

    I just installed the 64-bit version and now have all of my installed RAM (8Gb) available to the OS.
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  3. ignatzatsonic
    Posts : 12,012
    Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, 64-bit
       New #2

    Pushing the Limits of Windows: Physical Memory - Mark's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs
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  4. mgp1964
    Posts : 225
    Windows 7 Pro x64
       New #3

    For 32 bit operating systems the address length is 32 bits, which only allows 2 ^ 32 (4 294 967 296) addresses. Now, looking at that number it might seem like your operating system should support 4 GB, but all the other hardware such as your graphic card or any other card that contains memory (the video ram in your graphic card) that has internal memory also gets mapped into that address space which subtracts from that 4 Gigs, so if you have a graphic card with 512MB or ram your 4 Gig system would show 3.5 Gigs of usable memory.
    Last edited by mgp1964; 02 Jan 2012 at 00:49.
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