PC Problems Q&A thread

[Staude]

ssj12 said:

epsilon72 said:

ssj12 said:

epsilon72 said:

ssj12 said:

totalwar23 said:

epsilon72 said:

totalwar23 said:
Okay, this isn't really a problem but a question.
I currently have 2 GB RAM dual channel and want to upgrade to 2 * 2GB sticks. However I was told that isn't possible. I want to know why not?

Here is the current RAM I have now.

DDR2
Module size: 1024 Mbytes.
Max Bandwidth: PC2-5300 (333 MHz)

Which is it? Is your ram 333 mhz or is it PC2-5300? (those are two different speeds of ram)

 

Doesn't DDR2 double that speed to 667MHz

its a matter of how much ram the motherboard supports. Dont listen to people saying that XP doesnt support 4GB of ram. Thats BS. XP jsut doesnt count past like 3.7GBs of ram. You could have 16GBs of ram and only have it read as 3.7GBs. 

Wouldn't it depend on how much ram his video card has also?

 im honestly not sure.. I think because the video card ram is dedicated it doesnt matter. Just dont quote me on this one. 

From some quick and dirty googling it looks like that may be the case. (4 gigs + 512mb video ram = 3.5 gigs useable by windows?)

 you mean XP at least. Vista supports 16GBs from what I know of. he is talking Vista. 

It's all about windows 32bit and windows 64 bit. It doesn't matter which os (atleast not xp or vista)

Both 32 bit versions can only read 3.25 gigabytes (about 4 gigs in total including video card memory.. for me that's 3.25 gigs, for someone else it might be 3.50) while the 64 bit ones can read far more.

The issue is basically in the code where microsoft has chosen to lock it off (it's not that it's incapable) but it's very complicated and it's a long time ago i read through it. Basically i was told two things that go against eachother.

1. is that 32 bit only can read a certain amount of 1s and 0s and once you reach the 4 gigabytes the 32 bit system simply can't read anymore because it is 32 bit.

On the other hand i was also told that that isn't entirely true because 32 bit is capable of reading far beyond the 4 gigabytes but it was limited purposely by microsoft.

This also makes sense as you are able to actually get windows to show all of the ram through some awkward tweaking.

Anyways, hope you can use a little of my gibberish XD