4GB useful in XP SP2 if only seeing 3GB?

[fuddam]

got extra 2GB today, and naturally XP sees less. Is 4 x 1GB.

Heard of people seeing / using 3.5GB of physical memory. Mine is PAE enabled. Sees 2.95GB, and FWIW my vid card is only 256MB.

wondering if it's worth keep the 4th stick in (vs selling / donating to friend).

dual channel memory, btw. Not going to upgrade this machine to vista.

TIA

[shaithis]

You need to re-map the memory with a BIOS setting to see more, how much more though is highly dependant on certain factors.

I had a play with 4GB on a 32Bit Windows XP machine for the very first time over the xmas period (upgrading my mums PC with an old Asus P5W DH w/ E4300 and bought a 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair memory kit to throw in)......what happened was irritating...


With the remapping turned off the BIOS reported 4096MB, Windows would only see 3GB.

With the remapping turned on the BIOS and Windows reported 3.25GB

The issue was, when the mapping was turned on (the correct setting for a 32Bit OS!) the system was unstable once you started using ~2.5GB of the RAM, with the option off only 3GB was usable but I could use it all heavily without issues.


Didn't do too much messing around as I wasn't going to get worked-up over 256MB of RAM

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I only went with 4gb since my system was more stable with 2x2gb than 4 sticks of RAM.

[fuddam]

my bios sees the 4 sticks without alteration.

how would I remap? Machine is not acting too stable at the mo.......

btw, all ram same brand, same type, same cas etc, tho new set is faster than the older, but i know they should all operate at the old speed.

[Webby]

You may need a touch more NB voltage to stabilise the whole thing

[fuddam]

remapping of NB turned on, only sees 2GB in windows, though Asus's Pc Probe reports all 4 banks, with a gig each....

is more stable, but current situ is kinda pointless

haven't yet tweaked voltages manually.

[directhex]

Wow, running a 32-bit OS with >32 bits to address sounds awesome