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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

#31

Wasn't PAE available for pretty much all versions starting from XP? http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa36...

PAE was turned on but the licensing control code made by Microsoft checked if it's a consumer version of the OS or if it's a server, and if it's a server which version, and based on this decided how many memory to give to 32-bit OS. Consumer versions remained limited to 4 GB. This is detailed in the analysis of Geoff Chappell:

http://geoffchappell.com/notes/windows/license/memory.htm

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

#32
post #6

Cool trick, but why not just use 64 bit?

1) 64-bit has bigger overhead. If you have, for example, 8 GB maximum (e.g. a notebook) then you'll have the advantage of having more RAM available by using 32-bit system. If you just use a notebook for surfing, you wouldn't care. If you did something that had specific memory needs, it was the best solution before the notebooks with more RAM possible appeared.

2) Other hardware compatibility as there is still enough hardware without 64-bit drivers. But don't expect too much there: some kind of such hardware will have problem with this patch though. You'd have to try to be sure.

Now that even notebooks allow 16 GB the patch is becoming less relevant.

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

#33
post #32
post #6

Cool trick, but why not just use 64 bit?

1) 64-bit has bigger overhead. If you have, for example, 8 GB maximum (e.g. a notebook) then you'll have the advantage of having more RAM available by using 32-bit system. If you just use a notebook for surfing, you wouldn't care. If you did something that had specific memory needs, it was the best solution before the notebooks with more RAM possible appeared. 2) Other hardware compatibility as there is still enough…

1/If you have 8 GiB of RAM, and you just surf, you don't care about the 64-bit overhead. Also 64-bit is more convenient as browser tend to flirt with the 2/3 GiB process limit.

2/If you have 64-bit machine, this problem is unlikely to exist on Windows.

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

#34
We made the mistake of installing Windows 7 Premium 64-bit on a workstation with 24GB of RAM but Windows only said 16GB was available!

I can see why MS restrict their products like this so they can artificially price them. But in the end we ditched Windows and just installed Linux.

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

#35
post #19

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.

I'm actually in the market for a old dumb box and for power(i.e. energy/electricity) reasons I'm shying away from the PressHot - Pentiums. I'm targeting a Core 2 Duo which seem like a great balance between power and performance and I'm reasonably sure that the money I'd save by going this route would not be recovered over the course of 5 years if I get a more recent box.

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

#36
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...

Yes, but it's still a kludge

Yes, some programs can have more memory in 32-bit (example: Photoshop) but, as it says there, you have to keep swapping them

So, people, move to 64-bit already, unless you absolutely cannot

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

#37
post #35
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm actually in the market for a old dumb box and for power(i.e. energy/electricity) reasons I'm shying away from the PressHot - Pentiums. I'm targeting a Core 2 Duo which seem like a great balance between power and performance and I'm reasonably sure that the money I'd save by going this route would not be recovered over the course of 5 years if I get a more recent box.

You may go with one of the desktop Atoms. They can, IIRC, handle up to 4 GB of RAM and consume less power than a Core 2 Duo.

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

#38

We made the mistake of installing Windows 7 Premium 64-bit on a workstation with 24GB of RAM but Windows only said 16GB was available! I can see why MS restrict their products like this so they can artificially price them. But in the end we ditched Windows and just installed Linux.

Why on earth would you install Windows on a workstation machine when you can use Linux (and there's no limitations such as the need to run IIS, etc)?

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

#39

We made the mistake of installing Windows 7 Premium 64-bit on a workstation with 24GB of RAM but Windows only said 16GB was available! I can see why MS restrict their products like this so they can artificially price them. But in the end we ditched Windows and just installed Linux.

Why on earth would you install Windows on a workstation machine when you can use Linux (and there's no limitations such as the need to run IIS, etc)?

A wild guess could be that the work needed to be done on that station was windows only or they did not had *nix people on board or that they wanted to see if this was enough ram for Crysis ...

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

#40
post #20

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.

You could use it in a 32-bit VM. Since I went 64-bit, I've been using my Lide20 CanonScan though a 32-bit XP install in VirtualBox. Sure, the VM takes 20 seconds to boot to desktop, but that's better than junking a working piece of hardware simply because the manufacturer doesn't support it.
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