RAM question

[Takeno]

The laptop I recently bought has 4GB of RAM (shown in the BIOS), but my Home Vista Premium (32-bit) only shows 3GB of RAM, anybody know whhy? Any solutions?

[Robert]

32 bit operating systems can only recognize 3 GB

[Snowknight26]

32 bit operating systems can only recognize 4 GB

[Robert]

32 bit operating systems can only recognize 3 GB

[Sigi]

32 bit version caps out @ 3GB useable ram.

[Cjskater]

If you enable PAE or whatever, it should recognize 4GB. Read that here before, so don't ask how, I don't have Vista.

[Isiolia]

It's an x86 hardware thing. Coupled with a 32-bit OS.

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archiv ... y-ram.aspx for one article on it.

Another http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archive/2 ... oblem.aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605/en-us for MS's

Basically, you can use 4GB worth of addresses...but things other than RAM are accessed using them. So in practice, you can't make use of 4GB of memory. There are workarounds, but at least from what I've seen they are not available on laptops.
Not something I've had to work around yet since I knew about the general issue and built my machine with 3GB of RAM >_>

[Takeno]

I'm guessing I'd have to upgrade to windows vista ultimate? I really dont want to redownload/install all my programs with 64-bit support

[Isiolia]

Depends on whether your laptop can even do anything about it on the hardware side or not.

Part of the issue lies in the chipsets themselves. Apple, for instance, only offers up to 3GB of memory in Macbook Pros for exactly this reason. It's not the BIOS (Macs use EFI), it's not the OS (OSX handles plenty more memory in Mac Pros), it's the particular Intel chipset used in that model.

Near as I can tell, a possible reason for selling 4GB of memory in the laptop would be to allow for using a matched pair of DIMMs to enable Dual Channel mode. While you'd only be able to use 3GB of it, it'd be a little faster than using a 2GB + 1GB configuration.

[Elesirdur]

Going to 64-bit will pretty much destroy your chances of using 95% of software available. Very little has been written for that OS architecture. I agree that the Dual Channel mode is the likely reason behind the 4GB install of RAM (and perhaps to add a price premium too).

I stay stick with the 32bit you've got and live with maxed out RAM.

[Takeno]

I've been reading about some sort of PAE switch that in some cases allows an OS to detect the RAM. Anybody know how to use this PAE switch?