- Adding RAM to an Intel motherboard - what's the max?
- Posted by Trent SC on February 14th, 2008
I've got an Intel D865PERL motherboard with an Intel P4 2.8 processor and
1Gb or RAM (a pair of GB). I'm looking to upgrade the memory and have
looked at the useful crucial.com site, which advises that 32-bit versions of
Windows will only recognise, and more importantly use, between 3 and 3.5GB.
Is this true? In which case, there seems little point in putting 4GB on my
Windows XP Pro machine...
Thanks in advance.
- Posted by Cocco Bill on February 14th, 2008
If you isn't going to buy a new mashine soon,then 1Gb is quite enough for
you,belive me.
XP rarely use more than a 1GB.
- Posted by Bjarke Andersen on February 14th, 2008
"Trent SC" <invalid@bogoff.invalid> crashed Echelon writing
news:u3jh#qvbIHA.4284@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl:
Fist hit with google gives you the Intel website saying
"4 GB maximum total system memory"
True that Windows will only see 3-3˝GB, but this is not Windows' fault,
this is the architecture design, where the last part of memory is being
reserved for PCI, cache etc.
If your motherboard support memory remap (4GB remap etc, function has many
names) then you will be able to use all 4GB.
--
Bjarke Andersen
- Posted by Bob I on February 14th, 2008
First, unless you are using the swapfile to any extent OF are planning
to install Vista , adding more ram over 1 gig is waste of money.
workstation 32 bit operating systems have a 4 GB address area, and all
the hardware addressing has to fit in there too. So IF the motherboard
supports 4 gig memory and you install it, you have usable memory of 4
gig MINUS the addresses used up by the hardware. BUT the first
requirement is that you have a need to install more than 1 gig in the
first place.
Trent SC wrote:
- Posted by JohnO on February 14th, 2008
Do this test...run your system in the normal way, open all the apps you
normally run simultaneously, open the docs you normally work on, and browse
to whatever websites you normally visit.
Next, type Ctrl-Alt-Esc to open the task manager. Click the Performance
tab. In the lower-left corner is a number labeled Peak. That's how much
memory your system has needed so far since the last reboot. Total is what
it's using right now. If Peak is something like 656000, then you have only
needed ~two-thirds of your RAM, so far. You can leave this window and run
all your apps at the same time and see what happens.
Until that Peak number gets to about 800000, you don't need any more
RAM...adding it won't help system performance much, if at all.
-John O
