32 Bit OS 3GB Memory Limit, and Onboard

lettuce

lettuce

lettuce

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Now I know that 32bit windows operating systems have a limit of 3gb for memory but does this 3gb limit include the allocation of onboard gtx cards aswell or would the onboard use the memory above the 3gb threshold, ie I have 4gb memory win xp 32 would use a total of 3gb, but then would the onboard use the extra 1gb that windows can't use?
 

eddiew

eddiew

eddiew

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Azuse05 said:
It's actually over 3 but it applies to all memory on the system.
Click to expand...

Indeed; the limit is exactly 4GB of all memory on all devices in total, i.e. [(2^32) - 1] bytes (bits?).

System RAM minus graphics ram (minus hard drive cache? minus CD drive/sound card memory?) minus whatever else might possibly have some sort of memory address that the CPU could access directly = final value in windows.

So if you buy a 1GB graphics card for 32bit windows, with a total of 4GB, you will likely see a little under 3 gig total.

System manufacturers like to sell you machines with 3GB because they're using 512MB graphics cards or less, which won't intrude on that number. I can only imagine the number of 4GB machines returned to vendor because "only 3.2GB of memory is working..."

Oh well, maybe the OEM vendors will soon catch on that Win7 x64 is actually really good and worth using :)
 
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