64x OS running 86x programs?

Jonathan_King said:

The truth is, you don't need to be running a 64-bit OS unless you have 4GB+ of RAM. 32-bit can recognize up to 4GB, but in practice, you will only get 3.4 or so.

If it's not too inconvenient, I recommend installing a 32-bit OS, to save resources. Not a big deal...

I suspect that the RAM you are not seeing is taken up by system devices, such as onboard video card, etc. This is normal, and nothing can be or needs to be done about it.

So does that mean, after I get a GPU, it will show 4GB again?

I was thinking about 64x, because I know eventually I'll have to go there.. Because at the moment, nothing is bigger than 2GB (Well 4GB ram is just too expensive... ) But later on, it's going to come down... SO eventually everyone is going to go above 4GB ram...

That's what I thought.. ^ ^

MilesAhead said:

kaisterkai said:

I'm pretty confused lol...

But I think I catch on to what you're trying to say..

Thanks ^ ^

iow, a 32 bit CPU and OS can only address 4 GB. Any hw mapped into that space has to take it away from physical ram(if you happened to have 4 GB.) But since you can address more than that with 64 bit CPU and OS, you can map the physical memory address to a logical memory address that's outside the 4 GB... leaving all 4 GB for your programs and OS to use.

Actually the old 386 can really map more than 4 GB of ram, but nobody wants to bother using the segment descriptor table. They just set 'em all to 0 and use flat 32 bit addressing. I forget what the limit is if you used the descriptor tables... tetrabytes or something. If you're really curious you could probably find the spec on Intel site somewhere. I don't want to have to dust off my old 386 book. It's like, way too dusty to pick up!! :)

OK, I think I understand now... But anyway.. it's jsut 32x can only use 4GB max, 64x is more..

And there is some more other things lol..

THanks!

WindowsStar said:

Jonathan_King said:

The truth is, you don't need to be running a 64-bit OS unless you have 4GB+ of RAM. 32-bit can recognize up to 4GB, but in practice, you will only get 3.4 or so.

If it's not too inconvenient, I recommend installing a 32-bit OS, to save resources. Not a big deal...

I suspect that the RAM you are not seeing is taken up by system devices, such as onboard video card, etc. This is normal, and nothing can be or needs to be done about it.

Respectfully I would just add more RAM then doing a re-load way too much work. Plus it is better to stick with x64 that is the wave of the future and there will be less and less x86 software produced. In fact there is now software that ONLY comes in x64.

Yeah, that's what I had in mind... But anyway... Well it's probably still going to be a while, because you know MS is still trying to kill XP, let alone Vista and the x86 and 64x.. so it's going to be a mission and a half to get everything sorted out before they go onto all 64x in window 8...

But anyway.. I think staying on 64x will be better in some way.. ^ ^

@kaisterkai, Keep in mind if your onboard video card uses some of your installed RAM it won't matter weather you are running 32bit or 64 bit, it will still be subtracted from your usable RAM. The video card is reserving it for it's own personal use. If you had a dedicated Video card with it's own on board RAM you would see your full 2 gigs or RAM. Well almost, there would still probably be a little bit reserved by the system but it would be close.

Yeah, I see, because I just got myself a graphics card, and it says that there is 2GB well 1.9GB on the bios screen.. I guess upgrading to 4GB would make things even better..

But anyway.. I just want to ask another thing, what is virtual ram? I heard increasing your virtual ram can increase your computer speed... But then why don't we just use ready boost?

The more RAM the better.
Virtual RAM is your pagefile, and you could overide the default settings and increase it if you wanted too. IMHO windows does a good job of managing it on it's own and I don't mess with it.