Can the RAM limit be bypassed?

[Dredj]

Me and my mate were looking to buy some new RAM, we settled on 24Gb, way more then we need but it would do us for a life time.

But then he bought up that Windows might cap us, and sure enough 7 Home Premium has a 16Gb limit...

I read but found no confirmation that SP1 removes the RAM limit, but if it doesn't is there a registry entry or something to bypass the RAM limit?

 

[kegobeer]

Nope. If you want to use more than 16GB, you have to upgrade to Ultimate, Enterprise, or Professional.

 

[cluberti]

There are ways to hack it to bypass the limitations, but doing so is likely to run afoul of copyright laws in your country of residence. Following forum rules, the only advice we can really give is to use a Windows SKU that allows usage of the additional RAM (and SP1 does not remove the limitation).

Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express

 

[Dredj]

Well that sucks :/

We have Tri Channel mobo's too so it's impossible for us to even get 16Gb in Tri, only Dual. And as far as I know 12Gb in Tri is better then 16 in Dual.

Why have Microsoft even put a RAM limit on a 64bit platform...

 

[kegobeer]

Why? To differentiate their products and make you buy a version that supports more RAM. Nothing new there - and it's not unique to companies that make operating systems.

 

[Dredj]

Well that sucks.. we both have Tri channel supported mobo's, and 16 doesn't divide by 3, and from the little I have a look 12Gb in Tri is better then 16 in Dual.

Why is there even a limit on the RAM for a 64bit O/S..

 

[pparks1]

Me and my mate were looking to buy some new RAM, we settled on 24Gb, way more then we need but it would do us for a life time.

Ughhh....Almost wish that RAM was still expensive and then people wouldn't be buying so much of what they don't need and saving themselves some money.

 

[Logical Slacker]

Agreed. I have a total of 4GB of physical RAM. My PC runs just fine. To quote the great Chris Pirillo, "Don't buy more than you need."

IMO, 8GB should be enuff for anyone running later versions of Windows.

 

[M1GU31]

just upgrade to win 7 pro with anytime upgrade and problem solved Newegg.com - Microsoft Windows Anytime Upgrade: Windows 7 Home Premium to Professional

as you can see this supports the amount you have

 

[FuturDreamz]

see if you can sell or exchange your RAM. even 12GB is more than you will ever need. It's a near certainty that by the time 12GB is too little; Windows 7 will be obsolete.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Why buy anything in the computer world for "lifetime"? You would spend that much money on memory that will be useless a few years down the road. Nothing is forever in technology. Spend that money on other components that will make more of a difference.

 

[pparks1]

Exactly, and don't use the term "future-proof" to explain the purchase. Let's say you buy 64GB of RAM today, and 2 years from now the new "Curvy Bridge" CPU's from Intel come out and require the new DDR4-2500 memory standard. Well, buying excess today wouldn't have made your RAM any more useful for the future.

 

[stormy13]

see if you can sell or exchange your RAM. even 12GB is more than you will ever need. It's a near certainty that by the time 12GB is too little; Windows 7 will be obsolete.

That or DDR4 or even DDR5 will be out.

 

[Logical Slacker]

192GB huh. OMG. Who would ever need that much? NASA maybe?

 

[MagusMagnus]

Tell you what, if a performance increase is what you are after...

8GB DDR3 RAM kit (going for about $40-60 right now) and a nice AM3 x4 CPU (run around $100-120). Will cost you about as much as that ridiculous amount of RAM, and these two upgrades will ACTUALLY give you that performance boost you seem to be looking for in all the wrong places (as mentioned previously, your system will not utilize much of that 24GB RAM at all and it will be a complete waste, even before factoring in that your Win7 version won't be able to access it all in the first place).

Oh, and toss in a MOBO upgrade for a little extra if your present one can't handle AM3 and DDR3.

 

[Dredj]

My system is fine outside of my 6Gb of ram frequently running out or low, I was down to 400Mb last Sunday when playing Diablo 3. As for my mate he is a 3D modeller and does a ton of rendering.

I just noticed my system specs are also out of date, I will update it after this post.

 

[DeaconFrost]

If you were down to 400 MB, then your system was doing it's job. Windows 7 will use what you have in your system effectively, so you should be seeing it fill up when under an intense load. The problem is, there is a time when you won't be adding anything to your system aside of cost. On any given desktop computer, regardless of the use, 12-16 GB should be the absolutely max anyone would ever need to consider.

 

[pparks1]

I've been considering upgrading one of my work boxes from 8GB of ram to 16GB of RAM, but that's because I'm often running a handful of virtual machines and it would be nice to have a little more RAM to work with. But with 8GB of RAM, I can still run my host Windows 7 64bit machine, as well as 4 VM's simultaneously.

 

[M1GU31]

192GB huh. OMG. Who would ever need that much? NASA maybe?

Google

 

[FuturDreamz]

192GB huh. OMG. Who would ever need that much? NASA maybe?

Google

Who would definitely NOT be running Windows.