2gb or 4gb of ram

[Tiger Bass 5,000+ posts]

My decision is that I picked up a 2GB Crucial DDR2 667 PC2 5300. Going to add it and hope that it is compatible with my existing 1GB card that came with the computer. Other Lenovo users say they've had no problems with this.

Also going to wait on Vista since this seems to be the general consensus of everyone I'm talking to. I have no problems with XP.

 

[DDeitz 10+ year member]

I have 2 GB. On Vista. Ran it with Crysis. Was using 90% memory. Nuff said. You don't need anymore than 2. Unless you're editing hugeeeeeeeeeeeee pictures for a longggggg time. Or movies. Maybe for Assassin's Creed when it comes out. You see the specs on that? ****.

and how smooth was crysis with 2g of ram??.... i have 4gigs of ram and a 8800GTX and crysis was not smooth!!!

 

[qtipextra 5,000+ posts]

Just to clear this up for you. You can use 4 GB with XP, but you need the 64 bit version. Same with vista. Regular 32 bit vista will not see all 4 GB of ram

 

[snova031]

Just to clear this up for you. You can use 4 GB with XP, but you need the 64 bit version. Same with vista. Regular 32 bit vista will not see all 4 GB of ram

From what I've seen, Vista will see anywhere from 3-3.5gigs. On my rig, Vista recognizes 3.5gigs -3582mb to be exact.

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

sounds like your graphics card is using some memory.

 

[Tiger Bass 5,000+ posts]

Just to clear this up for you. You can use 4 GB with XP, but you need the 64 bit version. Same with vista. Regular 32 bit vista will not see all 4 GB of ram

And I do this simply by checking my display settings?

 

[konechiwa 10+ year member]

I'd get four just for keeping up with the times. It's always nice to have a little extra. You may not have to use it now, but later on down the road, you never know.

 

[uPsDdOWN 10+ year member]

And I do this simply by checking my display settings?

need to go into your boot INI to make the changes. read this article:

Boot INI Options Reference-Microsoft technet

Introduction

There are number of BOOT.INI switches that are useful for driver developers that wish to test their drivers under a variety of different system configurations without having to have a separate machine for every one. For example, limiting the amount of memory NT sees can be useful for stressing memory loads, and limiting the number of processors for testing scalability. I've compiled a complete list of the options that BOOT.INI currently supports. This list is reproduced in the Startup, Shutdown and Crashes chapter of Windows Internals, where you'll find more information about the boot process.

Note: to see what options a system has booted with examine HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\SystemStartOptions.

/3GB

Increases the size of the user process address space from 2 GB to 3 GB (and therefore reduces the size of system space from 2 GB to 1 GB). Giving virtual-memory- intensive applications such as database servers a larger address space can improve their performance. For an application to take advantage of this feature, however, two additional conditions must be met: the system must be running Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows NT 4 Enterprise Edition, Windows 2000 Advanced Server or Datacenter Server and the application .exe must be flagged as a 3-GB-aware application. Applies to 32-bit systems only.

from a member at another forum I use:

The 3GB switch will not enable more usable RAM in XP Home/Pro. It will enable applications that operate in user-mode memory to use 3GB of RAM, while restricting the kernel and kernel mode applications/drivers to 1GB of RAM. The application has to support addressing more than 2GB of user-mode RAM, most don't so it's not really a worthwhile setting for non-server/workstation users.
With a single PCI-Express video card, and service pack 2 installed, you cannot exceed 3.5GB of usable RAM on 32bit versions of XP. If you have an SLI setup, that can lower the amount of usable RAM down below 3GB depending on the framebuffer size of each card. On some Pre-SP2 systems you can get most of the 4GB by using the /PAE switch in the boot.ini file. By default SP2 uses /PAE, but there was a change in the way memory is handled so even with /PAE on, you can never exceed 3.5GB of total usable RAM in XP 32bit.

If you're using a PCI video card with something like 4MB of video RAM and you have no other devices with ROMs (like a NIC with PXE, or a SCSI card), then you could get very close to having 4GB of usable memory. This is a limitation Microsoft imposed on Windows XP 32bit. They resolved this issue on 32bit versions of Windows 2003 Server with the release of SP1, and since Windows Server 2003 is derived from Windows XP, Microsoft could very well add the same enhancement to XP, but they won't.

If you have a PCI Express/AGP card with a lot of video memory and want to get the most out of your 4GB in XP Home/Pro, your motherboard's BIOS will need an option for PCI memory overlap or a hardware/software memory hole. This will ensure you can use up to 3.5GB of RAM in 32bit versions of Windows XP, but you will never get more than that, unless Microsoft releases the patch to handle memory the way 32bit versions of Server 2003 do.

 

[AllStar1500bd 5,000+ posts]

need to go into your boot INI to make the changes. read this article:
Boot INI Options Reference-Microsoft technet

from a member at another forum I use:

An 07'er with semi-useful information... that's a first.

 

[Tiger Bass 5,000+ posts]

need to go into your boot INI to make the changes. read this article:
Boot INI Options Reference-Microsoft technet

from a member at another forum I use:

I am so confused by this.

Cliff notes?

 

[delvryboy 5,000+ posts]

If you're sticking with XP, 2gb is already overkill.

I would go with the 4gd for vista

 

[delvryboy 5,000+ posts]

And I do this simply by checking my display settings?

no, different version and a junk version at that...

 

[uPsDdOWN 10+ year member]

I am so confused by this.
Cliff notes?

you only need 2GB... you will get max performance and a satisfactory memory cache.. anymore would be a waste of money vs. performance.

this is the key sentence... "the application .exe must be flagged as a 3-GB-aware application." -- and you will rarely find that in off the shelf applications. YOU DON'T need more than GB on an XP machine.

there is a lot of OTHER things you can do For better performance, run a spy bot scanner and get rid of all the crap hiding in your p/c, clean up your registry, (free 30 day trial of tune up utilities 2008 has multiple levels of clean up and system tweakers) get rid of unnecessary files, etc. Partition your C: drive with about 30-50 GB of space only and ONLY install applications on that sector.. keep all the other music, photo, etc on a separate format/drive. And of course take the video processing load OFF OF the main processor, give it its own video card.

 

[Ignatowski 5,000+ posts]

I run 2 GB ram on vista and play COD4/TF2 etc with no issues using an 8800GTS card

 

[Tiger Bass 5,000+ posts]

you only need 2GB... you will get max performance and a satisfactory memory cache.. anymore would be a waste of money vs. performance.
this is the key sentence... "the application .exe must be flagged as a 3-GB-aware application." -- and you will rarely find that in off the shelf applications. YOU DON'T need more than GB on an XP machine.

there is a lot of OTHER things you can do For better performance, run a spy bot scanner and get rid of all the crap hiding in your p/c, clean up your registry, (free 30 day trial of tune up utilities 2008 has multiple levels of clean up and system tweakers) get rid of unnecessary files, etc. Partition your C: drive with about 30-50 GB of space only and ONLY install applications on that sector.. keep all the other music, photo, etc on a separate format/drive. And of course take the video processing load OFF OF the main processor, give it its own video card.

I keep my computer clean, delete unnecessary files, don't have any extra programs running on start up, etc. Just looking for something to run games like Supreme Commander.

How do I do this last part though? I have a feeling it'll help a lot for what I want to do.