XP Pro and 8 GB RAM useless?

[imported_Irse]

I'm running Win XP Pro with 4 gb RAM. If I up it to 8GB, will it be useless? I have read a couple articles about 4 GB limit for 32 bit OS but still don't quite get it. I'm getting a mental block on this one. I guess I just need to know if it will be worthwhile or not, especially with the prices so low. I'll be doing a lot of video editing and multitasking on a q6600 machine. Thanks

 

[olmer]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555223

Now you can use 64bit XP to use all 8GB if there are no compatibility problems with your editing software/hardware.

Reinstall using XP ?anywhere? upgrade disk (64 bit version) $5 or so and call to activate with your 32 bit key. Works 100% with OEM keys (just answer questions correctly) - not sure about retail.

 

[imported_Irse]

Thanks. There are some other programs that I can't use if I go 64 bit (I already emailed support about it). That's why I wanted to stay at 32 bit.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Irse
Thanks. There are some other programs that I can't use if I go 64 bit (I already emailed support about it). That's why I wanted to stay at 32 bit.

Which programs are you using that can't run in x64 ?
I do 3d work so , just wondering.

 

[imported_Irse]

I believe my Daytimer Organizer (I'm just assuming on that because they quit making it about 5 years ago). That's my favorite organizer and I tried just about all of them . It prints out exactly calendars the way I want. Hauppauge software for my TV tuner won't work. They said that they had the driver for the hardware but that I couldn't use the software for it. I need to email them again regarding a work around.

Maybe I need to read up about dual boot. Basically I would like to run more than 4 GB for Photoshop CS3, Nikon Capture NX and Videostudio 11 Plus. Sometimes I run all three at the same time during football season. I take pictures for a college football booster club and I edit them on Sun. At the same time I am editing, rendering and burning the video of the football game to give to friends who are unable to see the game. Would all of that work fine with q6600 and 4 gb RAM. The rest of the stuff could be run on a regular 32 bit OS. Or am I really off base? I'm just now trying to learn about this so please forgive my ignorance.

 

[n7]

You cannot utilize 8 GB on a 32-bit OS as has been mentioned.

A system with 4 GB would certainly be nice for what you are doing, but you could also try out Windows XP 64-bit for a 120 day trial: http://www.microsoft.com/windo...64bit/facts/trial.mspx


There's no official Vista trial, so i'm not condoning this per say, but you can also install Vista 64-bit without a key & try it out for 30 days; i don't see anything wrong with testing it out like that.

 

[Nothinman]

You cannot utilize 8 GB on a 32-bit OS as has been mentioned.

Sure you can, just not 32-bit Windows clients.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

You cannot utilize 8 GB on a 32-bit OS as has been mentioned.

Sure you can, just not 32-bit Windows clients.

Gah, sorry...

 

[Nothinman]

I believe my Daytimer Organizer (I'm just assuming on that because they quit making it about 5 years ago).

I wouldn't make that assumption, AMD64 systems run 32-bit code just fine so as long as the OS has all of the proper libraries available it should work.

Hauppauge software for my TV tuner won't work. They said that they had the driver for the hardware but that I couldn't use the software for it. I need to email them again regarding a work around.

With that you're pretty much screwed unless Hauppauge gets their act together.

Gah, sorry...

No problem, it's MS' fault for taking an already complicated subject and making it a lot worse by including artificial limitations in their OSes and misusing terms in their documentation.

 

[n7]

Well, i post with regards to Windows OSes (but didn't specify in this case ).
Don't really post anything about anything else, since i'm not very OS X savvy (& from using it, don't actually care to be), & my experience with Linux is limited to running Ubuntu live CDs

I'll leave the OS expertise to you; hence why you got my vote in the OS forum

 

[lilmidda]

You can most definitely use more than 4GB with XP. Microsoft's website will tell you that all 32-bit versions of Windows (even Vista) are limited to 4GB memory, but it will also tell you that using PAE (Physical Address Extension) your computer can handle and utilitze more than 4GB. If you have 4GT enabled at the same time, however, then your computer may not correctly display the true amount of RAM you have, but it will still use the (more than 4GB) RAM you have to cache and store applications etc. Either way, your computer CAN use more than 4GB, it's just a matter of whether or not your computers says it's using more than 4GB. Peace.

 

[cyberfish]

You cannot use more than 4GB in any 32-bit OS (Windows, Linux, OSX, BSD...) without PAE, because 32-bit systems use 4 bytes (32-bit) to store memory addresses (pointers). Every byte in memory needs to be addressable. On a 32-bit OS that means you can address 2^32 bytes, roughly 4GB.

I don't know about the implementation details of PAE, but it's more of a dirty workaround than a clean solution. It wouldn't allow a process to use more than 4GB, too, to do that you need a 64-bit OS.

With a 64-bit OS, you can directly address 2^64 bytes of memory, way more than what we need right now.

 

[pallejr]

PAE is clean. Sure it introduces a small overhead, but so does 64bit mode.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: cyberfish
I don't know about the implementation details of PAE, but it's more of a dirty workaround than a clean solution.

PAE is only implemented to support hardware DEP, numa, and hot-add memory devices on all Microsoft 32-bit consumer/workstation OS SKUs. WRT physical memory limits, Microsoft neutered the PAE kernel to behave no differently than it does without PAE.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Irse
I'm running Win XP Pro with 4 gb RAM. If I up it to 8GB, will it be useless?

The latest ramdrive from superspeed can access the installed ram above the 3.25GB windows limit and it will use that ram for making your ramdrive.

I just tried it, pretty cool. Got 8GB installed with XP Pro and Ramdisk v9 from superspeed. The ramdisk is 4GB, fully allocated to using the ram above XP's limit.

Pretty nice. So its not entirely useless provided you can find a use for a 4.5GB ramdisk. (pagefile)

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Irse
Maybe I need to read up about dual boot.

There's no "reading up" to do. When you install the 64-bit version of XP (on a separate partition, obviously), during the boot process, you then just choose which version you want to boot into. I've been dual booting 32-bit and 64-bit XP for a few months now. Both versions function as if they're the only OS you have installed, although you can access any file on the other version's partition that you want, if you need or want to do so.

Originally posted by: Idontcare
I just tried it, pretty cool. Got 8GB installed with XP Pro and Ramdisk v9 from superspeed. The ramdisk is 4GB, fully allocated to using the ram above XP's limit.

Pretty nice. So its not entirely useless provided you can find a use for a 4.5GB ramdisk. (pagefile)

Really? That's great. That would be perfect for the OP, if he weren't wanting to run 3 fairly hefty apps at the same time. For only running Photoshop, though, it would be perfect, since you can tell Photoshop to use any drive you want for it's scratch disk, and nothing's as fast as a RAM drive, now is it?


edit: BTW, why are you using a RAM drive?

 

[Idontcare]

Here's a quick link to the product page by the way.

RamDisk Plus also comes with a unique ability to use RAM unmanaged by Windows®.

Memory above 4GB, can be used on OS-limited platforms (e.g. Windows XP 32-bit or Vista 32-bit).

Depending on the system, RAM disks as large as 63 GB (32-bit) or 510 GB (64-bit) can be created.

http://www.superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php

Originally posted by: myocardia
Really? That's great. That would be perfect for the OP, if he weren't wanting to run 3 fairly hefty apps at the same time. For only running Photoshop, though, it would be perfect, since you can tell Photoshop to use any drive you want for it's scratch disk, and nothing's as fast as a RAM drive, now is it?

edit: BTW, why are you using a RAM drive?

Here's what by 4GB ramdrive produces for benchmark speeds:
http://i272.photobucket.com/al...SuperSpeed_LLCRAM_.png

I'm pretty sure if I optimized my ram timings these bandwidth numbers could be improved upon. Currently I'm running my DDR2-800 ram at a conservative 5-5-5-18 timing to ensure any problems I have with this ramdrive while I test it out aren't going to be caused by outright memory errors.

As for what I do with a ram drive...for starters I install all my commonly used apps on it (MS Office, photoshop, mathematica, metatrader) so my startup times are literally faster than me lifting my finger off the mouse after clicking the shortcut link.

The second thing I use them for is exactly what you specified, photoshop scratch file. I also run my 4 simultaneous instances of metatrader off the ramdrive as the backtesting process I use is very IOP intensive and if I run them on a spindle-based harddrive then they interfere with each other's random writes and the CPU utilization dogs down to 50-60% versus the 100% load I get when running them off of the ramdrive.

It really is a night and day difference for me. I think I am more excited about the prospects of Nehalem's triple-channel DDR3 setup having 6 Dimm mobos (even 9 is supported, although 6 slots is all I've seen reported in practice to date) with 24GB of DDR3 than I am about Nehalem's cores per se.

 

[Dean7]

Wow. That screenshot was awesome.

 

[Denithor]

IDC:

How do you avoid losing the programs you've installed on the ramdisk at reboots? I don't reboot often but sometimes it's unavoidable (windows updates, new hardware drivers, some software installs, etc).

These days you can pick up 4gb ddr2 for like $30AR so if it seriously improves performance it could be worth doing. But it seems like there are some issues.

Can you set your pagefile to this ramdisk? Would there be any advantage to this? I wonder if that would be a workaround solution to the problems with the MLC SSDs?

Do you recommend the SuperSpeed ramdisk drivers or one of the freebies out there?