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Use up to 64GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows 8

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Re: Use up to 64GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows 8

#21

Post by yuhong »

zdw wrote: post #19
stephengillie wrote: post #8

Why is there a 32bit variant of win8? Are there people who actually use win8 on non-64bit systems?

Long hardware maintenance cycles, especially in businesses. The last 32-bit NetBurst (Pentium 4) systems with 2GB of RAM aren't that bad to work on, when given a video card that supports Windows 7/8 video features and a decently fast disk. You don't need a whole lot more to run a greenscreen terminal emulator or a basic web browser.

Unfortunately Win8 requires NX so only the very last ones will work and Intel released socket compatible 64-bit capable NetBurst CPUs not long afterwards.

Re: Use up to 64GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows 8

#23

Post by darwinGod »

zdw wrote: post #16

Note that this doesn't enable you to run 64-bit applications, or for any single process to address more than 4GB of memory. As a result, it's of extremely limited utility today - you'd need a 32-bit application that needs to run on bare hardware (ie, not a 32-bit OS running under a 64-bit VM), and needs a ton of memory, or a pre-64-bit system with > 4GB of memory, which would be both rare and inefficient, as that wou…

A relevant stackoverflow thread for the same,which addresses some common misconceptions

http://superuser.com/questions/367490/can-a-32-bit-os-machin...

Re: Use up to 64GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows 8

#24

Post by ck2 »

yuhong wrote: post #17
ck2 wrote: post #15

Wish they'd backport it for XP, I am determined to get another year out of this machine.

Sadly it is not trivial to do. See Geoff Chappell's article: http://geoffchappell.com/notes/windows/license/memory.htm You'd be better off with Server 2003 Enterprise, which is also supported until July 2015 unlike XP.

XP actually has /PAE but apparently it doesn't work like this does per application, just extends 4GB once and that's it.

Re: Use up to 64GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows 8

#25

Post by LeeLorean »

yuhong wrote: post #17
ck2 wrote: post #15

Wish they'd backport it for XP, I am determined to get another year out of this machine.

Sadly it is not trivial to do. See Geoff Chappell's article: http://geoffchappell.com/notes/windows/license/memory.htm You'd be better off with Server 2003 Enterprise, which is also supported until July 2015 unlike XP.

The Geoff Chappell article is great. Seems like he examined it in detail:

"The 32-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 all contain code for using physical memory above 4GB. Microsoft just doesn’t license you to use that code."

A huge pity he no longer blogs.

Re: Use up to 64GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows 8

#26

Post by joenathan »

yuhong wrote: post #14
shinratdr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any Clover Trail tablets with more than 4GB of RAM?

I think most if not all of them only have 2GB.

They cannot support anything more, clovertrail is a crappy stopgap that uses very old tech. -Source: I have a Thinkpad Tablet 2.

Re: Use up to 64GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows 8

#27

Post by cpleppert »

LeeLorean wrote: post #5

You will make Microsoft angry if you do this. They have various versions of Windows 8, and some are more crippled than others. It enables PAE which is 36bit addressing Microsoft brought in for their server product line. You still only have 4GB per process, though. I've been using this one for Windows 7. Gives me 64GB http://www.adminsehow.com/2011/03/windows-7-32-bit-pae-patch...

I'm pretty sure that not all the drivers(especially graphic ones) fully support PAE. Server versions of PAE would be much easier to support than making sure drivers for win32 would be compatible in a PAE environment.

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/gg4...

Typically, device drivers must be modified in a number of small ways. Although the actual code changes may be small, they can be difficult. This is because when not using PAE memory addressing, it is possible for a device driver to assume that physical addresses and 32-bit virtual address limits are identical. PAE memory makes this assumption untrue.

Re: Use up to 64GB of RAM on 32 bit Windows 8

#29

Post by ajasmin »

wycx wrote: post #20
stephengillie wrote: post #8

Why is there a 32bit variant of win8? Are there people who actually use win8 on non-64bit systems?

Sure. I have a scanner that is now useless because Canon never released a 64-bit driver. (The useful lifetime of a scanner is longer than the life of an individual PC or the time a manufacturer will support it.) Lots of scientific and industrial equipment will not have 64-bit drivers.

Try using VueScan. It supports a bunch of older scanners.
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