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It's all about this!
In my Job one of the things I do is car branding and it only takes a medium sized van image to fill 3G and mess with HD swapping. Also ultimate raytracing is a process which uses A LOT of RAM, the same for video editing. When new versions of photoshop, 3D Max etc are released (Lightwave8 is there) the world will get a strong shift towards 64 bit and it is going to happen much sooner than many people believe.

M25,

I gotta ask, just what kind of performance do you expect out of your system? Real time? Ive seen you refer to the swap file several times. You do know that it not always the answer, problem or even an issue? Ive had problems with my new system to which you responded "swap file" which I know is in fact not the problem. It was, and is ATIs "wonderous" drivers. But who cares.

The system in your sig...is that what your running? What OS are you using and what programs exactly? What interface are your HDDs? Are you running more than one? Are they sharing a channel? Whats your video card?

Ive used Corel for years..3, 5, 7, 9 and 12. Ive used a bunch of different 3D and video software as well. Through Win 3.1, 95, 98SE, XP Home and XP pro. Ive never had any kind of significant hardware problems. Ive recorded 37 gig(continuous....I fell asleep) of MPEG2 720x480 29.95FPS (about 4GB/hr)no problem under XP home on 2x512MB of ram. In my experiance, problems with graphics and video tend to be (in order of precedence):
1) Windows
2) Video drivers
3) Software/hardware conflicts (brand new, on either side)
4) HDD space
5) HDD fragmentation
6) channel sharing

The only RAM problems I've ever experienced was the size limit on win 98, and that was easily solved by going back to less than 1GB.

The swap file does not slow things down that terribly, or for that matter, even noticeably for most people. I think you may expect too much from your hardware, or you may have some artificially induced hardware limits.

It's all about this!
In my Job one of the things I do is car branding and it only takes a medium sized van image to fill 3G and mess with HD swapping. Also ultimate raytracing is a process which uses A LOT of RAM, the same for video editing. When new versions of photoshop, 3D Max etc are released (Lightwave8 is there) the world will get a strong shift towards 64 bit and it is going to happen much sooner than many people believe.

An by quoting me, you are trying to say?...

I second what crimsonfilms said. Gamers and enthusiasts spend money like hell with little gains or even without any gain at all. Good for them.
My g5 has 8Gb of ram (mostly video and audio production and big as* photoshop albums), and yes, I need them, as you need 3 or 4.

The shift to 64 bit will not be as strong as you expect.
There demand for it on the consumer level is next to nothing since it has been proven that the performance gain is minimal (10-20%). And considering that most consumers don't need 4 GB of RAM on a daily basis and the COST of having that much RAM, the demand will remain low on the consumer level for a while. Windows XP 64 bit, Linux and even OS X to some degree has been 64 bit ready or capable - yet almost every consumer application (games, entertainment and Office type apps) are working fine at 32 bit.

Games will benefit from 64 bit. But the reality is Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, Outlook, Word, Excel, etc comprise 80% of the general PC experience. 32 bit is 'good enough'.
It will take a while before you can justify 15% performance increase that will cost at least $400 more on their next PC.

Well much of this info is close but not 100% on the mark.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/syst [...] AEmem.mspx

1) 32-Bit operating systems can only DIRECTLY address 32-bit of memory. It is possible to use and access over 4gb of memory ony a 32-bit system. XP only supports addressing 4gb, but many of the 32-Bit Windows Server operating systems support this as well as other 32-bit operating systems. In these systems the memory will be seen as "Extended Memory" much like memory over 640k was see in Win9x systems. Windows will page this memory in/out as it needs to to access the memory over 4gb.

2) This seperation is not a physical seperation. This is a logical seperation used by processes and has nothing to do with the OS itself. The OS is just another collection of processes.

3) This limit is per process. You can have two processes using 1.1gb of memory. You can't have one process using 2.2gb of memory w/o this switch.

4) I agree. Most folks don't need over 2gb and it is not likely to help. I'm one of those rare folks who makes use of 2gb on certain systems, but not on my gaming/office task systems.

I don't mean to be a troll, but how was my post misinformative?


I'd like to correct you on a small point in that systems with extended memory addressing (such as IA-32 systems) can use up to 64GB of RAM by allowing 36-bit memory addressing. They're still 32-bit systems; they just have extended memory addressing.


I agree that the adoption of 64-bit systems has been somewhat optimistic. Vista will change this as the professional community adopts 64-bit, but I don't think 64-bit will be mainstream to the consumer until the next iteration of Windows, at the earliest.

Loosly translated for the original poster ( )...


> 2GB of memory will be largely useless if you're a gamer, because the most you'll do is open up the 512MB or so the OS is using, and that's assuming the game needs more than 1.5 GB to start with (which is unlikely). Your game won't have access to the extra RAM unless it implements the AWE API (which is highly unlikely).

If you multi-task a lot or use higlhy optimized software such as Maya or Adobe, then you'll likely benefit from the extra RAM.



Save your money, and leave the 2 RAM banks open for Vista when and if it ever comes.


P.S. let's go easy with the misinformation comments. I don't think anyone's spreading misinformation here. If you want to contribute something, please do without trying to discredit the previous posters also trying to help.

LOL? Learn to correctly form sentences that are easily comprehensible. :-P You need a visit from the comma fairy.[/quote]

Yer, Listen to the person that swallowed a dictionary this morning for his breakfast 8) [/b]

I'm pretty sure your 1.5->3 Gb increase resulted from enabled dual channel; 1.5 Gb means you had a 1 Gb stick and a 512 Mb, thus DC=disabled; completing them with 1x1Gb and 1x512Mb, means dual channel 2Gb and dual channel 1 Gb.

XP boots the same once you're over 512 Mb.

zenmaster

1. You are correct, but as Whizzard and you have indicated this is 'extended' process - so technically not 32 bit. Nevertheless, you are correct.

2. Never said anything about physical. My implications where that in Windows XP, the OS itself has a certain allocation system for memory once it reaches 2+ GB of memory.

3. Never said anything on the contrary. If I did, apologies.
To clear it up - it should have been 'per application'

Whizzard9992
It was not meant for you indirectly - it was a general comment.

Windows XP 32 and 64 bit

There is absolutely no reason to spend the extra dollars on 4 gigs of ram it is a waist. Down the road with Vista, probably.

2 gigs is important for hard core applications. For example, my CAD designers using Civil CD were upgraded from 1 gig to 2 gigs of ram and their performance sky rocketed. We recently dropped 4 gigs in one to test, no change at all. These guys do everything on that PC at once from opening 25 linked cad files to running ITunes to running Outlook (exchange) and 10 word docs up.

At home I ran WinXP 64 on my gamming system with 1 gig of ram for a year with absolutely no problem (WOW, Doom, etc). I upgraded to 2 gigs with no difference.

My workstation at home currently has 4 gigs of DDR800 (core 2 duo 2.6ghz. Its simply over kill. When I rip my 16 gig Avi home video files on it. There was no change from 2 to 4 gigs.

At this time for and XP system and Vista, 2 gigs is fine, more is simply a waist right now. But 2 now and then if you need it in 2 years buy it cheap.

as I tell everyone. The HARD drive is the slowest part of your computer. Use that extra money and buy 2 Sata 2 drives and RAID them. This is by far the best "windows" performance upgrade you can do period.

Technical explanations are easy to pick apart, especially when you may simplify the explanation for clarity to others

So, I may have just been clarifying more than anything.
Of course what is clarity to me is often fog to others.

I find it most amusing when two folks quibble over a point for a while to only realize they had been in agreement but where just not getting exactly what the other was saying :>

zenmaster

Hehe. Correct.
I think it was a wasted effort on my part to quible over a quible. The further explanation was much appreciated.

Well, very near to that. I know it may be very professional and as many people correctly underline, 2G+ RAM brings nothing to a non professional PC but I have nightmares working on car stickers with 2G of RAM and XP 32 bit, it takes MINUTES just to make an image flip and this is by no means normal for nowdays computing power.
P.S: and going to sleep, as you mention, is not an option I have

This is likely due to a poor video card or other system issues.
I've seen AV scanning software act like 50lbs shackles on some systems.

What does Tskmgr show for

Total and Available Physical Memory?
How about Commit Charge? Total? Limit? Peak?