Windows 7 4GB (3GB usable ) in windows 7 32 bit

sshehab

New Member
Hi guys ,

i have a problem that will drive me crazy , i just upgraded my laptop's RAM from 3 GB to 4 GB, but the windows 7 is saying : "4GB (3GB usable ) " , i went throught The usable memory may be less than the installed memory on Windows 7-based computers and enabled the PAE like what mentioned in Physical Address Extension (Windows) and i checked my boot loader i found pae ForceEnable , so this means the PAE was enabled successfully , but windows still saying "4GB (3GB usable ) " . what i shall do to use the 4GB , my windows is Windows 7 professional 32 bit ..:(

Thanks
Sherif
 
Quite simply, you can't use it, 32bit cannot access above 3gig due to limitations of the 32bit addressing, only 64bit OS with a 64bit CPU can access above this sorry.
 
The actual limit is around 3.5GB although the figure of 4GB can be achieved by the inclusion of video RAM.
 
Yes the card or at least the allowance for it makes up the rest of the figure to 4GB (or so they say)

As for the patch you linked, I'd say that using a 64 bit os is probably the way to go if you want to really use more than 4GB of RAM. I would also heed the warnings given at the foot of the page.
 
As for the patch you linked, I'd say that using a 64 bit os is probably the way to go if you want to really use more than 4GB of RAM. I'd would also heed the warnings given at the foot of the page.
I totally agree with you , but i cant move to win7 64 bit for many reasons 1st i have no money to buy 64 bit version , 2nd i saw that my laptop doesn't have all its drivers for win 7 64 bit , so i'll have to search for drivers and this will be a very big headache , 3rd all the applications i'm using is 32 bit ... So finally the only ways to enjoy my 4GB are :
1- to change to 64 bit version
2- use the patch that i mentioned above ... :(
 
Gotcha.. :)

I'd use that patch with extreme caution though and it seems reading between the lines that a performance boost is not always the outcome.
 
Re: [langtitle=fr]Re: 4GB (3GB usable ) in windows 7 32 bit[/langtitle]

can your m/board use 4gb as some have restrictions on them , also you will still be able to use 32bit apps on a 64 bit system
just what are your specs for this lapptop
 
I totally agree with you , but i cant move to win7 64 bit for many reasons 1st i have no money to buy 64 bit version , 2nd i saw that my laptop doesn't have all its drivers for win 7 64 bit , so i'll have to search for drivers and this will be a very big headache , 3rd all the applications i'm using is 32 bit ... So finally the only ways to enjoy my 4GB are :
1- to change to 64 bit version
2- use the patch that i mentioned above ... :(

by the way i tried the patch i mentioned before , actually it didnt do anything because me current windows kernel is newer than the one the patch made for ... So i dont recommend it ..
 
Personally I would just not worry about it.

3.something gig has been the restriction on 32 bit for a long time.
The little bit that you gain from getting the last little bit of ram available isn't going to give you a noticeable difference in performance.

When you get your next computer it will probably have 16 gigs of ram and you won't have any choice bet to go with 64 bit.

Mike
 
Re: [langtitle=fr]Re: 4GB (3GB usable ) in windows 7 32 bit[/langtitle]

OK, as noted the 32bit system can only address total memory up to the 32bit address space, so any menory, including the video has to map itself into that 32bit space.
But the 3+ gig of memory is enough for almost any conceivable computing proccess, providing that the system is up to it.
 
Re: [langtitle=fr]Re: 4GB (3GB usable ) in windows 7 32 bit[/langtitle]

If you're not in a hurry with complex stuff like video editing, games running multiple ram intensive programs. I've got 64 bit with 8 G ram and will never go back to 32 bit. I used a converter program from VMware and it used almost 6 G by itself. How slow would that run on 32 bit with 3G ram of which half was already used by OS?
Joe
 
Re: [langtitle=fr]Re: 4GB (3GB usable ) in windows 7 32 bit[/langtitle]

While that link is handy for the laymen, it's clearly missing the whole point by not testing the larger scale uses of the extra memory. It's all fine and well them say for single task scenarios etc, but with no comparisons it's a hollow example. They should have shown tests with video editing large HD files, Virtual machine use, running dedicated game serverw as well as the game in seperate tasks (something I do frequently), and the compression tasks were a bit thin, I mean seriously just 300 odd mb test! I frequently compress files way bigger, also why not any bluray conversions and native 64bit tasks like Photoshop cs5 doing large amounts of processing...

Most if not all of the tests they devised are only going to test the CPU and GPU ability to number crunch, not the actual real reason you would have more ram for, which is why the scores are virtually the same on every task regardless of the amount of ram. Extra ram is about the hidden performance gains doing things like Alt-Tabbing, multi-tasking workloads and background games etc smoothly, re-loading the game data over and over on respawns without need to spin up the hard drive each time, the sort of things you only notice once the ram is taken away or you use a machine that has far less, you all know how frustrating that is don't you when you are expecting it to run as good as your home rig does.

Also try running the windows checkdisk app, mine uses about 6gig of ram while scanning, clearly a large read ahead buffer of some sort to speed it up, compared to the command console version which is vastly slower and uses maybe 100mb of ram.

It's like they are trying to tell people they don't need something, which may be true to a point, but the price of the ram are quite cheap now so why not max your ram out if you can? It's similar to hard drives now that are stupidly cheap for 1tb & 2tb which is handy but not essential, always better to have too much than not enough I say, the whole less is more rubbish is just for apple fanboys in my view, in the space of a few years prices for hardware has dropped massively for the performance they offer, there has never been a better time to upgrade, ram is at an all time low price, hard drives are mega cheap, hell even entry level GPUs like the 5830/50 and 460 are very cheap for the grunt they offer. The younger generations need to remember that the early PCs were hideously expensive for calculater grade performance, I remember my first Pc in the early 1990s was a good £1200 for something now of the specs you'd use to make a gameboy advance worth £80
 
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