HowTo Windows System
HowTo: FULL 4GB RAM Utilization under Windows
Make sure your system meets all requirements to get all the 4GB, under Windows 2000, XP, 2003 or Vista.
This is a quick guide and won’t involve much tech. detail. I’ll try to make it straightforward and foolproof, digging links in the article for technicality. (more after the jump)
Hardware
INTEL Platform:
Desktop: 955x and later, including P965, 975x, P35, x38 etc. 650i and 680i from nVidia also work.
Server: E7230 and later, including all E75xx and 5000x
Notebook: PM965/GM965, 945 or earlier wouldn’t work.
in a nutshell, for Intel, in order to get full 4GB support, the chipset needs to support at least 8GB RAM.(why?)
AMD Platform
Chipsets that support AMD processors that use socket F, socket 940, socket 939, or socket AM2.
BIOS
Comes with memory remapping support. This can be verified if the specified option presents in BIOS(pic). Otherwise, install 4GB RAM and check if BIOS can find them all(pic).
OS Selection
All 64bit Windows will work with 4GB, but for some reason, many users still prefer 32bit, so skip this section if you already moved to 64-bit.
Windows 2000
All versions, including Professional and all the server variants, can use full 4GB when memory remapping enabled in BIOS and PAE is set in boot.ini.
Windows XP
Since SP2, Microsoft limited the physical address space to 4GB even PAE is on. So pre-SP2(vanilla or SP1) does qualify but it’s definitely not a practical option. The only choice is Windows XP 64bit Edition.
Windows 2003
Except Web Edition, which supports 2GB maximum, All the rest, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter Edition(32bit or 64bit) are capable for 4GB.
Windows Vista
Unfortunately, all 32bit Vista wouldn’t work, even the Ultimate. 64bit(all versions) are good to go.
Trouble Shooting
Q: My Windows shows only 3GB!
A: That’s what this article for…
Q: I enabled memory remapping, but even worse, Windows shows 2GB now!
A: This is how memory remapping works. Select proper Windows version to get all 4GB.
Q: So what should I choose, 32bit and 64bit, in case of memory management?
A: On 32-bit versions of Windows, the user-mode address space is only 2GB, you can use /3GB switch to raise the bar. This might cause potential problem for some [poorly written] applications.
So if the 4GB ram is for multitasking mostly, I don’t see much need to move to 64bit, considering various capability issues and limited driver support. However, to satisfy those memory-hungry games/databases, it’s time to start 64-bit adventure.
Guido (from Germany) said
am November 7 2007 @ 11:58 am
I’ve read your article “frustration - confusion - solution” as well as many of the forums dealing with that topic. I agree with the above, but there is still one point regarding the new PM965 chipset for notebooks. You say that “PM965/GM965, 945 or earlier wouldn’t work. - in a nutshell, for Intel, in order to get full 4GB support, the chipset needs to support at least 8GB RAM.” The PM965, however, does have a 36-bit addressing space even if it just supports 4 GB RAM of memory. Unlike the PM945, this should allow a proper remapping of a portion of the physical RAM to higher addresses and solve the problem, or not ? So in my eyes, the addressing space needs to be more than just 4 GB RAM (i.e. 36-bit or more), but there is no need to support more than 4 GB RAM of physical memory.
Anonymous said
am January 3 2008 @ 7:24 am
anon said
am October 28 2008 @ 8:55 pm
how can you find out how much RAM your chipset can support, i have vista ultimate 64bit so want to know what my chipset can support, HP however have been less than helpful letting me know what my chipset can deal with…..any ideas??