4GB of RAM is awesome....

[jkim05]

Originally Posted by Silound

Not to knock anyone, but why put more than 4 Gb in a PC running Windows XP or Vista 32-bit as the primary OS?

32-bit versions of Windows can only effectively use up to 3120Mb (roughly 3 gigs) due to software limitations (claimed to allow compatibility on older machines), and can be forced into using a full 4Gb via registry changes. Otherwise, the 4th gig is essentially only used by hardware such as shared video memory tasks.


Much love to 64-bit OS's for opening that up, but even then Vista was proven to actually SLOW DOWN with more than 16 GB of RAM (inefficient memory use) until Service Pack 1 came out and ended that problem.

Just wanted to bump this post. Important thing to remember, unless you're running a 64-bit OS, there's no point in putting more than even 3 GB in a computer, the OS barely recognizes part of the 4th GB and it doesn't give any noticeable benefit.

That's why my next CPU is gonna run a 64-bit OS.