Windows 7 Please raise RAM handling

Steve Sanford

New Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2009
Surely the best "wonder feature" would be to allow W7 to use more RAM! I believe all 32bit versions are crippled to make the 64bit versions seem more attractive.
If W7 could utilise 8Gb RAM I would buy it straight away!!! Otherwise, stick to XP...!
 
It's not possible to have a 32-Bit version run more than 4GB of RAM
32-Bits is an addressing space, and as such it can only handle a certain amount of RAM.
Every bit has an address where in the ram is stored, with 32bit processor this is 2 power of 32 = 4,294,967,296 bytes = 4 GB.
It's simply impossible without a 64-Bit processor and 64-Bit operating system.
 
I
Have no intention going back to 32 bit. My only regret is a few programs that won't install in 64 bit. At least one program I think it may be just be a 16 bit installer. I've got XP 32 bit on a virtual pc for these.
Joe
 
Surely the best "wonder feature" would be to allow W7 to use more RAM! I believe all 32bit versions are crippled to make the 64bit versions seem more attractive.
If W7 could utilise 8Gb RAM I would buy it straight away!!! Otherwise, stick to XP...!

Ummm.. yeah.. hate to tell ya but Windows 7 CAN use 8GB of ram.. It's pretty easy too.. you just go to the store once Windows 7 is released and buy the 64 bit version of it then PRESTO! You'll be able to use 8GB of ram and more if ya want to.. :)
 
Surely the best "wonder feature" would be to allow W7 to use more RAM! I believe all 32bit versions are crippled to make the 64bit versions seem more attractive.
If W7 could utilise 8Gb RAM I would buy it straight away!!! Otherwise, stick to XP...!
Try to create a zip file thats larger than 4GB ;)
Its not a marketingstrategy (not only tough^^)
 
Try to create a zip file thats larger than 4GB ;)
Its not a marketingstrategy (not only tough^^)

Why on eath do people try and blame Microsoft for stuff outside its control. Much as they would like to alter them to suit themselves I'm sure Microsoft is still bound by the laws of physics like every one else.

The original addressing scheme of the Intel Pentium chip would only allow a maximum address space of 4GB - hence the OS was designed to work within this limit. Modern CPU's don't have the restriction but to use > 4GB in a 32 Bit OS requires quite a lot of complex "jiggery" at the OS level and a lot of re-write in the kernel -- and since around 99% of CPU's these days are 64 bit capable it doesn't make ANY sense in having different versions of a new 32 Bit OS. Windows 7 is likely to be the LAST Microsoft 32 Bit OS in any case.

For the more technically minded IBM in its earlier mainframe days had a similar problem with MVS 370 / MVS 390 OS'es. Their original CPU's could only handle a 16 Bit adressing scheme -- when the new CPU's came out which could handle more they still stuck to the base 16 bit addressing scheme but then had another 15 bits to address "Different Banks" of 16 bit memory. One Bit was reserved in the scheme to tell the CPU whether it was operating in "traditional 16 bit mode" or 31 bit mode. A lot of hardware was necessary to handle the switching and addressing in the early days to make the system perform acceptably. For the old timers who worked on IBM mainframes this stuff was handled by a special piece of protected fast storage located at a special address within the OS called the PSW (Program Status Word) -- refer to MVS/ESA for more details if you are interested.

If you've got 8GB either upgrade to X-64, run several Virtual Machines with the 32 bit OS concurrently or use the excess RAM > 4GB as a RAM Disk.


BTW as far as photoshop is concerned it knows at install time whether you are running on X64 or X32. If you upgrade to X64 bit OS'es re-install photoshop -- your key is still valid - but remember to
1) uninstall photoshop on the X-32 bit OS
2) TRANSFER ACTIVATION
3) install on your X-64 bit machine.

Other note on 64 bit Photoshop -- if you are using Camera RAW don't forget to add the RAW update (Camera Raw.8bi) to Program files==> common files==>adobe==>plugins==>CS4==>File Formats==>CS4 do this for BOTH the PROGRAM FILES directory (X-64) and the program files-X86 (the X32 version).

In the CS4 download package there should be two versions of this file in the install directory one under win64 directory and one ( X-32 bit version) under the root. If you can't find these then download (Free) from the adobe site under Camera RAW.

You only need this (these) files if you have a recent camera model - compact or DSLR and you do "RAW" processing. If you don't understand what I have written here don't worry as you won't be using RAW processing -- Pro shooters on the board will understand what I'm getting at here).


Cheers everyone and have a great weekend -- finally getting some time off.

jimbo
 
sorry Jimbo, i totally didnt whine about microsoft. I just wanted to point the threadstarter at another 32bit restriction, which is as you said out of microsofts hands.
 
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