More Ram?

[Silvvers]

I haven't been able to find an answer to this. I have a fairly new
computer, it is quad-core AMD Phenom 9500 that came with 3 GB DDR2
dual-channel ram. Since I upgraded to Win7 will this machine recognize more
ram? I thought I had read that Vista 32 bit wouldn't recognize more than 4
MB of ram. Will my computer be able to use more ram now that I have Win7 or
is that completely depenent on the motherboard?

 

[K]

I haven't been able to find an answer to this. I have a fairly new
computer, it is quad-core AMD Phenom 9500 that came with 3 GB DDR2
dual-channel ram. Since I upgraded to Win7 will this machine recognize
more ram? I thought I had read that Vista 32 bit wouldn't recognize more
than 4 MB of ram. Will my computer be able to use more ram now that I
have Win7 or is that completely depenent on the motherboard?

If you want to access more RAM you need to run a 64-bit OS
K

 

[Augustus]

I haven't been able to find an answer to this. I have a fairly new
computer, it is quad-core AMD Phenom 9500 that came with 3 GB DDR2
dual-channel ram. Since I upgraded to Win7 will this machine recognize
more ram? I thought I had read that Vista 32 bit wouldn't recognize more
than 4 MB of ram. Will my computer be able to use more ram now that I
have Win7 or is that completely depenent on the motherboard?

Windows 7 32bit, like Vista 32bit and XP 32bit, cannot use more than 4 gig
of RAM due to the limitations of the 32bit OS architecture. Windows XP 32
simply reports what the OS can "see"...which is usually 3.2 Gig. 32-bit
versions of Vista SP1 and SP2, along with Windows 7 report the physical
amount of RAM installed. The useable amount is unchanged from XP. There's a
maximum of 2^32 address locations available in a 32 bit operating
system...which works out to 4 Gig of memory address space total. In
addition, Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 32bit will reserve large chunks of
the upper 2Gig of memory for running applications (there's 2 gig reserved
for the kernel) to physically map the memory addresses of any hardware
devices installed in the system....like video cards, etc. Typically, this
means that on a 32-bit box with 4 Gig of RAM installed, Windows 32bit of any
flavor can only "use" 3.2Gig for running itself and any applications. Even
32 bit versions of Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 Server run into
limitations. Although they can address memory up to 64Gig by physical
address remapping, they still have to run each process in a 2Gig memory
space with 2 Gig for the kernel. 64 bit systems do not have any of these
issues.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I haven't been able to find an answer to this. I have a fairly new
computer, it is quad-core AMD Phenom 9500 that came with 3 GB DDR2
dual-channel ram. Since I upgraded to Win7 will this machine recognize more
ram? I thought I had read that Vista 32 bit wouldn't recognize more than 4
MB of ram. Will my computer be able to use more ram now that I have Win7

No.


or is that completely depenent on the motherboard?

Also no. It's dependent on whether you run 32-bit Windows or 64-bit
Windows.

All 32-bit client versions of Windows (Windows 7 as well as Vista and
XP) have a 4GB address space (64-bit versions can use much more).
That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not go.

But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.

Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. If you have a greater amount of RAM, the rest of the RAM
goes unused because there is no address space to map it to.

If you have 64-bit CPU you can install 64-bit Windows 7 and install
more RAM. Otherwise you can not use much more than you already have.

 

[ray]

I haven't been able to find an answer to this. I have a fairly new
computer, it is quad-core AMD Phenom 9500 that came with 3 GB DDR2
dual-channel ram. Since I upgraded to Win7 will this machine recognize
more ram? I thought I had read that Vista 32 bit wouldn't recognize
more than 4 MB of ram. Will my computer be able to use more ram now
that I have Win7 or is that completely depenent on the motherboard?

Are you using a 32bit version or 64bit version? Any 32 bit OS will only
use 4gb at any one time. The MS consumer offerings are limited to 4gb -
no matter what. Some MS server systems and Linux 32 bit systems can
utilize PAE to access up to 64gb - but each process is still limited to
4gb.

So what are you doing that you think you need more than that?