Does Windows XP Professional support 4 gigs of ram?

Question

I am a 3D artist/compositer I am will get a new computer and I am not sure if I should use Windows XP Pro or Windows XP pro 64 bit. I use Maya, Soft Image/XSI, Adobe Premiere CS3, After Effects, and Combustion 2008. I also like to play FPS games once in a while. My computer specs are: CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad, DDR2 4G, Motherboard: ECS intel chip G33T-M2, GeForce 8800 GT-512M, 500G hard drive and DVD RW. Will Win XP Pro take advantage of my 4 Gigs of RAM?

Answer 1

In a word, no. XP can ADDRESS a maximum of 4 GB of RAM, but that address space also includes all onboard PCI devices, such as your video card. In order to be able to talk to those devices, XP must ignore the upper 512 MB of your 4 GB of RAM.



To map the PCI devices above the 4 GB mark, and be able to use all of the RAM, you must have both a 64-bit operating system / processor and a 64-bit chipset.

Answer 2

No

A 32 bit os will only register 3.5 gigs of ram at the most to take advantage of the full 4 gigs you will need a 64 bit os. I dont recomend vista though because the extra half gig you will get will be lost to vista being VERY ram hungry. I would get xp pro 64

Answer 3

Yep i agree with Ben, plus XP will only go to 4GB max, anything over that is totally wasted and can even cause crashing and unexpected behaviour.



I'm pretty sure Vista allows higher RAM capacity? Not sure, but considering how much RAM it actually uses, i would think the limit would get bumped from 4GB to 6GB or something along those lines. As i said, not sure - you're better off doing some research, Your hardward sounds like it would easily cope with that much RAM so i wouldnt worry about that.

Answer 4

Nope. Generally this limit is around 3 GB total, because one of the bits is reserved for use when addressing memory. Applications are limited to 2 GB total, but thanks to some clever technology, each application "thinks" it has infinite memory (in reality, each has its own 2GB ceiling, but that's a lot for one application, so it might as well be infinite). You may hear about this switch you can do to increase this limit, but it will change the way your PC performs and can degrade performance. I don't recommend doing it. 3 GB is a lot. Going 64 bit allows you to use several terabytes, but usually to get similar performance on a 64 bit machine you have to double the amount of memory, so if you were using 3 GB on 32 bit machines, a 64 bit machine would need 6 GB to guarantee similar performance when memory pressure increases.

Answer 5

Yes it does. When you get into XP 64bit then you can add even more ram. The problem with xp-64bit is its stil not friendly with all drivers and programs. Its risky switching to 64bit windows, it does support most programs and drivers but there is a chance it might not accept a game or program so its up to you. If you do upgrade to 64bit windows you can run 8gigs of ram depending on your motherboard.

Answer 6

Only x64 will support 4gb of RAM. 32bit windows only supports 3.5

Answer 7

It will, or should be pretty fast and put it to efficient use. I would say you got a pretty good setup, nothing to worry about.

Answer 8

Yes Windows has all the drivers.

Answer 9

It will - this is generally a question more of 'will my motherboard support it?' than 'will my OS support it?'