using more than 4 gig in xp

bwanaaa · Apr 18, 2009

i dont how many of you will find this useful, but i 'found' a way to use all the ram in my xp system. As you know, xp limits the ram to 4 gig minus the amount that the graphics card requires ~ so about 3.25 gig is available to the OS. However, if you have ram disk plus installed, you can assign it to use that unrecognized ram. for example, i put 8 gig into my xp box and created a ram disk out of the ram that xp cannot use.

what to do with it?

well, i put internet explorer and firefox cache files there. photoshop scratch files. whatever normally goes to a slow hd can now be accessed super fast.

forgive me if this is not the right place to post his.

SuperMiguel · Apr 18, 2009

bwanaaa said:
i dont how many of you will find this useful, but i 'found' a way to use all the ram in my xp system. As you know, xp limits the ram to 4 gig minus the amount that the graphics card requires ~ so about 3.25 gig is available to the OS. However, if you have ram disk plus installed, you can assign it to use that unrecognized ram. for example, i put 8 gig into my xp box and created a ram disk out of the ram that xp cannot use.

what to do with it?

well, i put internet explorer and firefox cache files there. photoshop scratch files. whatever normally goes to a slow hd can now be accessed super fast.

forgive me if this is not the right place to post his.

i think it will be kind of dumb using 8gb of ram on a 32bit os.. just install 64 bit

Neuromancer · Apr 18, 2009

bwanaaa said:
i dont how many of you will find this useful, but i 'found' a way to use all the ram in my xp system. As you know, xp limits the ram to 4 gig minus the amount that the graphics card requires ~ so about 3.25 gig is available to the OS. However, if you have ram disk plus installed, you can assign it to use that unrecognized ram. for example, i put 8 gig into my xp box and created a ram disk out of the ram that xp cannot use.

what to do with it?

well, i put internet explorer and firefox cache files there. photoshop scratch files. whatever normally goes to a slow hd can now be accessed super fast.

forgive me if this is not the right place to post his.

Very nice something to consider especially with many people using 32 bit OSes to help overclock further

Evilsizer · Apr 18, 2009

well you could always do the PAE switch but that will only get you up to 4gigs of system ram. i did what he is suggesting on my IP35-pro with XP-SP3/32bit and 4gigs of ram. though i mainly did it for temp files from IE/FF,ect...

hansen · Apr 20, 2009

Evilsizer said:
well you could always do the PAE switch but that will only get you up to 4gigs of system ram.

Without PAE there is access to 4GB address space, which is maximum for 32bit XP. So PAE will not help. XP/SP2 runs in PAE mode by default anyways.

kkpudge7 · Apr 21, 2009

How is something like that possible? I don't see it working since 32bit OS can only address 3.25Gb of memory

vlaszlo · Apr 21, 2009

I also use ramdisk plus since few months, for TEMP and for PageFile. No problems. Some things are in Vista64 much slower than in XP32.

MattNo5ss · Apr 21, 2009

kkpudge7 said:
How is something like that possible? I don't see it working since 32bit OS can only address 3.25Gb of memory

32bit OSs can address (2^32)B or 4GB of RAM.

VRAM is just addressed first, then your RAM. So, 4096MB - VRAM = Total Possible System RAM.

hansen · Apr 21, 2009

The ram disk product mentioned here goes beyond the Windows memory manager, so it can use ram above 4GB.

kkpudge7 · Apr 23, 2009

oh ok Mattno5ss...I forgot to add Vram in there.

r.wingextremist · Apr 27, 2009

bwanaaa said:
i dont how many of you will find this useful, but i 'found' a way to use all the ram in my xp system. As you know, xp limits the ram to 4 gig minus the amount that the graphics card requires ~ so about 3.25 gig is available to the OS. However, if you have ram disk plus installed, you can assign it to use that unrecognized ram. for example, i put 8 gig into my xp box and created a ram disk out of the ram that xp cannot use.

what to do with it?

well, i put internet explorer and firefox cache files there. photoshop scratch files. whatever normally goes to a slow hd can now be accessed super fast.

forgive me if this is not the right place to post his.

So... what kind of speed increase are we talking about? ........what about benchmarking? cant see any increase there...... still. That brings me back to my problem I only have two gigs of reaper and I am gonna upgrade while the prices are low. So which is better 4 gigs of Mushkin Accent 1600 @ 7 7 6 18 or 8gigs of gskill 1600 @ 9 9 9 24? Will be 64 bit when windows 7 is released ( have 64 beta/XP dual booted now) The prices are about the same. Mushkin seems like it is way better memory but still double the ram for the same price.... Help me out what do you guys think? I will repost with my specs

r.wingextremist · Apr 28, 2009

here are my specs, in the signature

chuck4456 · Apr 28, 2009

Way too much fuss is made over OS limitations. The motherboard doesn't care which OS you are using or how memory the OS sees. If the motherboard can run 4 gigs, it will run 4 gigs and the OS will use as much of it as it can.

using more than 4 gig in xp

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