Don't worry, my mind isn't going to really explode - I'm just hoping you can help me wrap my mind around some of this.
I am running Win XP Pro 32bit on a D975xbx MoBo, with an E6700 Core 2. I want to upgrade to Vista (to utilize more than 3 gigs memory - I've got 6 that I'm itching to use). I've been advised that I need to use Vista 64 bit to be able to use that much memory.
So ... can I even use Vista 64 bit on my system? Could I upgrade from Win XP Pro32 to Vista Premium 64Bit? Or would I have to do a clean install? What denotes a 64bit system? When I bought this computer, why might the manufacturer have put on a 32 bit OS rather than a 64bit?
From what I've googled, it seems the E6700 is 64 bit compatible. So I think I'm taking a step in the right direction. Thanks for helping me out!
ok
vista 64bit is a great concept. but, the compatibility is the same as trying the same as shaq going into payless trying to find a shoe that fits. aside from that vista 32 I am pretty sure won't utilize more than 3.12gb.
Basically the only thing I can say to you. Maybe its just me but, that is why there are a bunch of people on these forums. You wasted your money with the excess ram for now. Pretty soon I'm sure 64 bit will catch on. If you want to dual boot xp 32 and vista 64 you can tho. I've had issues with vista and overclocking but, no one else seems to get this. Other than that I liked vista a lot. Needless to say. If anything Don't lose the 32 bit operating system if you do have the 64. Because not even my printer works in 64bit. Games and other programs don't utilize this either. From rumors that are probably 10% true. They are working on a way to get games to run in 64bit mode while windows can stay 32.
more tidbits of info.
I have 3gb of ram. while in vista. using vlc playing transformers in 720p. mozilla with 50tabs open. all image tabs 1680 x 1050 pics off google. media monkey playing music and scanning a picture. while photoshop is open using 500mb of ram in its own. I was only using 1.95 gb of ram. Altho my rig can't max out crysis I bumped the resolution up to 1650 x 1050 and maxed all the settings out using the dx10 level graphics in xp trick. and only used 1.97.
If you want to jump to vista because of gaming. Its not worth it for dx10 since there will always be a way to get it to work in xp just as good with better results. If you want to upgrade for visuals then its right for you.
summary
32 vs 64.
32 bit + 5 compatibility
64 bit -5 compatibility
32bit ram 3.12
64 bit.. as of today basically limitless since motherboards don't have the ability to breach the breaking point
I also had TONS of problems with Vista 64bit and had to install Vista 32bit instead. I like Vista also, but it does have quirks with older programs especially!
I would also agree that you wasted money on the 6gb of ram unless you are a video editer/publisher, graphic design person, or some sort of electrical engineer, I doubt the 6gb will give you much more of a performance boost tahn just haveing 2 or 3 would. OH, or if you work on the space shuttle at home ;)
Mike
Drop to 3gb and run vista32, then buy another system to use the extra 3gb in and run vista 32 on that also - then you can have 2 dual core or better computers to fold for our team on
Remember, I am opinionated and nothing I say or do reflects on anyone or anything else but me
you can run a dual boot of xppro32 and vista64. i do it. but when running xp32 your not going to be able to take full advantage of all teh ram you have. o well. to much never hurt anyone. i use 4 gigs of ram in 2 2g stix and im happy with it because i get good performance now and i can upgrade to 8 gigs when the time comes (not for a while). its a little overkill but i dont care. heres an explanation of the whole 32 vs 64 crap i copyed and pasted casue i suck at explaining stuff
[Note from Brian Madden on March 24, 2004: Since I originally posted this article, I received some corrections from David Solomon, author of the book "Inside Windows 2000." (Thanks David!) I've since rewritten some portions of this article to incorporate his corrections.]
There seems to be a lot of confusion in the industry about what's commonly called the Windows “4GB memory limit.” When talking about performance tuning and server sizing, people are quick to mention the fact that an application on a 32-bit Windows system can only access 4GB of memory. But what exactly does this mean?
By definition, a 32-bit processor uses 32 bits to refer to the location of each byte of memory. 2^32 = 4.2 billion, which means a memory address that's 32 bits long can only refer to 4.2 billion unique locations (i.e. 4 GB).
In the 32-bit Windows world, each application has its own “virtual” 4GB memory space. (This means that each application functions as if it has a flat 4GB of memory, and the system's memory manager keeps track of memory mapping, which applications are using which memory, page file management, and so on.)
This 4GB space is evenly divided into two parts, with 2GB dedicated for kernel usage, and 2GB left for application usage. Each application gets its own 2GB, but all applications have to share the same 2GB kernel space.
This can cause problems in Terminal Server environments. On Terminal Servers with a lot of users running a lot of applications, quite a bit of information from all the users has to be crammed into the shared 2GB of kernel memory. In fact, this is why no Windows 2000-based Terminal Server can support more than about 200 users—the 2GB of kernel memory gets full—even if the server has 16GB of memory and eight 3GHz processors. This is simply an architectural limitation of 32-bit Windows.
Windows 2003 is a little bit better in that it allows you to more finely tune how the 2GB kernel memory space is used. However, you still can't escape the fact that the thousands of processes from hundreds of users will all have to share the common 2GB kernel space.
Using the /3GB (for Windows 2000) or the /4GT (for Windows 2003) boot.ini switches is even worse in Terminal Server environments because those switches change the partition between the application memory space and kernel memory space. These switches gives each application 3GB of memory, which in turn only leaves 1GB for the kernel—a disaster in Terminal Server environments!
People who are unfamiliar with the real meaning behind the 4GB Windows memory limit often point out that certain versions of Windows (such as Enterprise or Datacenter editions) can actually support more than 4GB of physical memory. However, adding more than 4GB of physical memory to a server still doesn't change the fact that it's a 32-bit processor accessing a 32-bit memory space. Even when more than 4GB of memory is present, each process still has the normal 2GB virtual address space, and the kernel address space is still 2GB, just as on a normal non-PAE system.
However, systems booted /PAE can support up to 64GB physical memory. A 32-bit process can "use" large amounts of memory via AWE (address windowing extension) functions. This means that they must map views of the physical memory they allocate into their 2GB virtual address space. Essentially, they can only use 2GB of memory at a time.
Here are more details about what booting /PAE means from Chapter 7 of the book "Inside Windows 2000," by David Solomon and Mark Russinovich.
All of the Intel x86 family processors since the Pentium Pro include a memory-mapping mode called Physical Address Extension (PAE). With the proper chipset, the PAE mode allows access to up to 64 GB of physical memory. When the x86 executes in PAE mode, the memory management unit (MMU) divides virtual addresses into four fields.
The MMU still implements page directories and page tables, but a third level, the page directory pointer table, exists above them. PAE mode can address more memory than the standard translation mode not because of the extra level of translation but because PDEs and PTEs are 64-bits wide rather than 32-bits. The system represents physical addresses internally with 24 bits, which gives the x86 the ability to support a maximum of 2^(24+12) bytes, or 64 GB, of memory.
As explained in Chapter 2 , there is a special version of the core kernel image (Ntoskrnl.exe) with support for PAE called Ntkrnlpa.exe. (The multiprocessor version is called Ntkrpamp.exe.) To select this PAE-enabled kernel, you must boot with the /PAE switch in Boot.ini.
This special version of the kernel image is installed on all Windows 2000 systems, even Windows 2000 Professional systems with small memory. The reason for this is to facilitate testing. Because the PAE kernel presents 64-bit addresses to device drivers and other system code, booting /PAE even on a small memory system allows a device driver developer to test parts of their drivers with large addresses. The other relevant Boot.ini switch is /NOLOWMEM, which discards memory below 4 GB and relocates device drivers above this range, thus guaranteeing that these drivers will be presented with physical addresses greater than 32 bits.
Only Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows 2000 Datacenter Server are required to support more than 4 GB of physical memory. (See Table 2-2.) Using the AWE Win32 functions, 32bit user processes can allocate and control large amounts of physical memory on these systems.
Go ahead and dual boot like everyone is recommending, you've got nothing to lose from it. I was running on a dual-boot setup for a while, until I realized I hadn't booted into XP in over a month, so I deleted my XP partition a while ago, no problems with Vista 64-bit now.
hercules71185 wrote:I've had issues with vista and overclocking but, no one else seems to get this.
It happens when ram isn't stable. Vista loads data into all of your ram, so if any of it isn't stable, you'll get problems, which might not be noticed in XP if that area of ram isn't used. You'll notice the same thing if you boot into a modern Linux OS.
that is weird. so.. what will that cause problems in using xp? since I have 2gb of better ram its using that for xp while vista makes my cheap ram freeze. So if I fix the ram timings and stuff to make it slower then vista will still run the same?
This was a lot of good info. I appreciate all the insight and advice. For now, I'm going to stay with XP. I feel like I can probably squeeze out a little extra performance from XP and get by just fine. I also read the other day that SP3 for XP should be out in the spring and it is reported to cause some fairly significant performance increases. Eventually I'll try the dual boot, but for now I'll just use the Vista on my laptop and keep my desktop with the XP as my gaming rig. Thanks again!
dual booting is simple if you have enough hard drive space just save enough for all your programs for the xp partition and enough on the vista it makes it much easier to not worry about default saving. Or if you are like me and stuff ends up on your desktop it uses space too. I now have 100 for xp 100 for vista and then a space for information and data such as mp3s and movies
Don't use vista.. i find it really pretty bad for something.. for example today was watching a DVD it froze.. tried ending process and it just wouldn't stop it eventually system locked up..
that and software lincensing stuff seems to just switch off on me all the time meaning i need to reset it to open things like the control panel... (i have a completely legal version too..)
I guess to each is own ya know. Vista does have problems. As does xp, and ubuntu with the lack of ability with everything I use. Photoshop, I don't see a point to learn gimp when I am so used to cs3. games.. yea thats horrible. But, overall vista was great I didn't mind it at all. Looked good never had it freeze (for the month I used it) Gaming was affected mainly because my oc went down and then more loss from the display. Just not worth using it for your primary
I use Vista 32 bit and have 4 gb of ram, although Vista does not recognize, drops down to 3gb. I still don't understand the difference and what works with the 64 bit version. Does anyone know if MS will issue an update to the 32 bit that will allow for more ram?
nh5111 wrote:I use Vista 32 bit and have 4 gb of ram, although Vista does not recognize, drops down to 3gb. I still don't understand the difference and what works with the 64 bit version. Does anyone know if MS will issue an update to the 32 bit that will allow for more ram?
To answer your question: No, Microsoft will not issue and update that enables any 32-bit OS to use more RAM. The reason is very simple. A 32-bit OS is only able to enumerate 4GB of memory, and the devices in your computer (like your video card and hard drive controller...) require some memory address space to function. In a 64-bit OS the "ceiling" is raised to 16GB of memory and hardware address space can be moved beyond the range of the physical memory installed.
That's why, in fact, when 4GB of RAM is used in a 32-bit system it will see around 3.2GB of that memory. Depending on the hardware installed. If you want to see this go into Device Manager, right click on one of the devices listed there and choose "Properties"; then select the Resources Tab and you should see a "Memory Range" listed. This is the physical memory address of that device, and that is how information is passed back and forth between it and the rest of the system. So the difference is that, with a 32-bit OS this address must be placed below 4GB, and with a 64-bit OS it can be moved out beyond that limit.
Clear as mud now?
Intel Core i7 4820K @ 4 GHz | Asus Rampage IV Formula | 16GB Patriot DDR3-1866 | Asus Poseidon GTX 780 water cooled... (other stuff too <- 500 char limit!)
I had problems with vista64 also, very very sluggish, and it crashed numerous times also, i dont think it was anything driver related however, i never had any issues there. I do notice that my brothers 32 bit vista does run smoother, i wound up going back to XP last week and i havent looked back. 120 dollars down the drain :/
