Vista x64 and RAM debacle...

Coming from XP, I was under the understanding that the more memory your system had the faster it would run until someone showed me the light and told me that XP was only capable of working well with 2GB of Ram... 3GB if you know what you're doing and could tweak something.

Later I learn that Vista needed 4GB to run and since I now have 4GB's and it feels like Vista is very stable and perhpas slightly faster than my XP, I think that people were correct.

Being said that, I have heard people getting into having 8GB's or even more and since DDR2 memory is at its lowest I was thinking on jumping on that band wagon but then, it hit me... what if Vista is only capable of using 4GB and the rest would just be a waste or even worse, it could very well hinder the OS performance?

What is the scoop? If my motherboard is capable of accepting say 8GB's of Ram, would I be helping my Vista x64 OS by adding 4 more GB's to it or would I just be wasting my money? Also, seeing as to I also dual boot with XP, would my XP OS suffer from that as well?

I know someone will ask if I really need all that Memory and the answer would be, I don't really know, all I know is that I want to game as smooth as possible and if adding more memory will help me do that w/o having to overclock my CPU or GPU... I am all for it, aside from the fact that I also want to know whether Vista is capable of accepting more than 4GB and still use it at its maximum.

Hello AstaLaVista.

I 'borrowed' this somewhere ...

The 32-bit editions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate, all support a maximum of 4 GB of RAM. The real variations come when we start looking at the 64-bit versions. On a system running x64 Vista Home Basic, you can add as much as 8 GB of RAM. x64 Vista Home Premium supports as far as 16 GB of RAM.

But it will take no less than 128 GB of RAM in order to satiate x64 Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. 128 GB of RAM is the maximum supported physical limit in the case of these three operating systems.

However, with Windows Vista, there is a clear distinction between the maximum supported physical memory and the virtual addresses that the operating system will use. The x86 editions of Vista will not deliver full support for all the RAM installed in the case that this amounts to 4GB. And there are also some limitations involving x64 platforms.

Later Ted

But it will take no less than 128 GB of RAM in order to satiate x64 Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate.

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Hmmm, I find this a little hard to swallow!

Even at the cheap prices we have seen the DDR2's go for, who can afford 128 GB of Ram and what Mobo supports this for the regular and casual home user? :eek:

If that is the case, I have to go rob a bank... see you later! :D

Stick with 4GB and you should be okay. If you have apps that use a lot of RAM, then upgrade to 8GB. It should not hinder x64 OS performance at all.

AstaLaVista said:

I know someone will ask if I really need all that Memory and the answer would be, I don't really know, all I know is that I want to game as smooth as possible and if adding more memory will help me do that w/o having to overclock my CPU or GPU... I am all for it, aside from the fact that I also want to know whether Vista is capable of accepting more than 4GB and still use it at its maximum.

Click to expand...

Yes.

HexManiac said:

AstaLaVista said:

I know someone will ask if I really need all that Memory and the answer would be, I don't really know, all I know is that I want to game as smooth as possible and if adding more memory will help me do that w/o having to overclock my CPU or GPU... I am all for it, aside from the fact that I also want to know whether Vista is capable of accepting more than 4GB and still use it at its maximum.

Click to expand...

Yes.

View attachment 7079

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129 processes :eek: Damn.

AstaLaVista said:

But it will take no less than 128 GB of RAM in order to satiate x64 Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate.

Click to expand...

Hmmm, I find this a little hard to swallow!

Even at the cheap prices we have seen the DDR2's go for, who can afford 128 GB of Ram and what Mobo supports this for the regular and casual home user? :eek:

If that is the case, I have to go rob a bank... see you later! :D

Click to expand...

MOST applications and games that the everyday user would use, will not be able to make use of more than 4 Gigs.

I run 4 Gigs with a Quad Core processor and have never had a bottle necking issue when it involves memory.

If your big into 3D graphics rendering, AutoCAD, or running a web server or the like, then it becomes important to have more than 4Gb.

If your running Crysis, COD4, Word, Firefox, Blu-Ray watching, etc, you really won't need more than 4Gb. At least under Vista. New applications or new OS's may change this but for now 4 is plenty.

Only 64-bit applications can use more than 2GB ram. 32-Bit apps, by their very nature and by design, can only use 2GB, even if that app is run on a 64-bit OS.

The advantage of having more than 4GB installed is that when you run many applications, the ram would be available to them. Vista x64 uses some very crafty memory management procedures to allow 32-bit apps to run in the higher address spaces.

It just comes down to the more the merrier. You can never have enough...

HexManiac said:

AstaLaVista said:

I know someone will ask if I really need all that Memory and the answer would be, I don't really know, all I know is that I want to game as smooth as possible and if adding more memory will help me do that w/o having to overclock my CPU or GPU... I am all for it, aside from the fact that I also want to know whether Vista is capable of accepting more than 4GB and still use it at its maximum.

Click to expand...

Yes.

View attachment 7079

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woot...... 129 processes
what are you running........server?

acdcfan said:

HexManiac said:

AstaLaVista said:

I know someone will ask if I really need all that Memory and the answer would be, I don't really know, all I know is that I want to game as smooth as possible and if adding more memory will help me do that w/o having to overclock my CPU or GPU... I am all for it, aside from the fact that I also want to know whether Vista is capable of accepting more than 4GB and still use it at its maximum.

Click to expand...

Yes.

View attachment 7079

Click to expand...

woot...... 129 processes
what are you running........server?

Click to expand...

I was running 3 virtual machines through VMWare Workstation (all using 1GB), SQL Server 2005 Management studio, VS 2005, InstallShield 2008 and a couple of XML and hex editors and burning a backup DVD. I had a couple of Word docs and an Excel spreadsheet open as well. And the Vista forums up as well. I was taking a break .

I have 16GB of RAM. My workstation also has a pair of E5430 Xeons (8 x 2.66 GHz cores) and SAS RAID. You would need 64-bit Vista to get more than 4GB of RAM. The benefit is in how many programs can run at one time. I also have a 16GB paging file that is used. I moved it to its own drive. Most applications don't use more than 200MB of RAM. Games can use 500MB-1GB of RAM. A few of my A/V apps can hit 1-2GB of RAM. Adobe Photoshop CS2 can use 6GB of RAM and CS4 can use 8GB of RAM. Adding ram is based on your applications and usage.

4gb is a stable amount for most systems including games. Only go above this is you are using it for servers apps and also the bit of photo editing/photoshop or equivelent.
Or wait until the triple channel memory comes out:D.
It is expensive and they come in threes but will be worth it when they come down in price.

Thanks for setting me straight guys, I guess I will invest my money elsewhere (newer CPU or adding another GPU) when the time comes.

As stated, I only game on my rig and right now I am passing by with my E6300 + ECS8800GT 512mb, I will be looking into updating one or both of those soon as I can not get higher than 1280x768 right now in Crysis even if I OC my GPU (which I have) and up my CPU to about 2.6Ghz and my monitor's native res is 1680x1050.