11-19-2008, 02:46 PM
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#5 (permalink)
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Mentor Hardware Team
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 1,308
OS: XP & Vista
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Re: 32-bit with 4GB of ram ????
Hi, yes SP1 introduces PAE (physical address extension). If the Toshiba is a good price I would go for it 32 bit installs perfectly with 4gb This article was written by an associate explains it well:-
Quote:
In order for your computer to communicate with each byte of RAM (computer memory), each byte of RAM must be assigned a unique memory address.
32-bit computers and operating systems have a maximum capacity of 4,294,967,296 memory addresses (2^32).
Many computer components other than RAM also require memory address space, such as System ROM, APIC(s), Integrated PCI devices, (network connectors, SCSI controllers, etc.), any/all PCI card(s), all of the RAM on Graphics card(s), etc., etc.
At start-up, your computer calculates the number of addresses needed for all components except RAM. It then subtracts that number from 4,294,967,296 to determine the number of memory addresses left for RAM.
If the total installed RAM is equal to or greater than the number of memory addresses left, some of your installed RAM will be unavailable for use by the operating system.
For example, if the number of memory addresses needed for everything except RAM was 676,457,349:
4,294,967,296 - 676,457,349 = 3,618,509,947
3,618,509,947 / 1,073,741,824 (1GB) = 3.37 GB
In other words, 3.37 would be the amount of RAM available as reported by Windows (32-bit).
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