Windows Vista RAM Limitations
Can't get enough RAM installed? More RAM may make a better PC, but if you have a standard 32-bit system don't bother getting more than 4GB as that the most the system will report to Windows. This is simply an architectural limitation of 32-bit Windows. In fact, it is more like 3GB!
A 32-bit version of Vista will never even use the full 4GB of RAM in your system. It's because of the memory mapped IO reservations, which control how the onboard memory on your installed devices overwrites parts of the system memory, which lowers the total memory available to Vista itself. According to Microsoft, the 32-bit version of Vista is limited to 3.12GB of total available memory: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605
This goes the same for servers, which is a key reason why 64-bit computers are getting increased attention. Memory is no longer expensive and it can help a lot so limitations like this become a real headache for many.
So you move to 64-bit. With this comes some stiff driver requirements, but what do you get for RAM limitations with Vista 64-bit? Actually, it depends on what edition of Vista you are running: Home Basic is limited to 8GB, Home Premium is limited to 16GB and the other editions (Business, Enterprise and Ultimate) let you get all the way up to 128GB.
So how long before we are pissed that 128 is as high as it goes? Well, you can always move to Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition SP2 64-bit to take advantage of 2 Terabytes of RAM. That should seem like a big number for the foreseeable future.
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Comments
It has always been unclear to me why motherboards have been made that advertise amounts of RAM capacity that can never be reached. This has been for quite some time, and not just recently with Windows 32 bit. I remember 386 motherboards advertising RAM capacity which could never have been achieved because the RAM was never made in a high enough density to reach the advertised capacity with the number of slots.
It seems like some sort of truth in advertising should be in effect, and less caveat emptor.
Posted by: marc klink | August 2, 2007 9:40 AM
It's the motherboard manufacturers trying to show their motherboards aren't only good for the here and now but are expandable for the future. I have a Intel Anchorage Mobo that was stated to max out at 768 MB. Over time memory prices dropped and the denisity got tight enough to make the chips I needed to max my board, I also discovered Linux which unlike the Windows versions of it's time could properly utilize memory over 512MB (theoretically Windows 98SE was capable of utilizing 2GB's of RAM though over 512MB people saw performance drop off). It's amazing what I was able to do with that machine given it's era.
The machine has been relegated to a diskless workstation mainly only used for web surfing, e-mails and such but I was glad they said what the max capacity was since many of the OEM PC manufactures crippled their motherboards back then to max at 64 - 128MB (hence I'll never buy a Gateway (they limited theirs WITH an Anchorage Mobo to 64 MB!). Intentional Built-in obsolesce should be illegal!
Posted by: Bill Leonhard | August 3, 2007 8:24 AM