4gb of ram in vista 32 bit

[carman594]

I currently have 2gb of ram. I have home premium 32 bit. Would I see an improvement in games if I just added 2 more gigs of ram?

 

[mike99]

Use Task Manager to check peak RAM use after a gaming session and see how much RAM you used, if more than 2Gb, you need more physical RAM.

Mike.

 

[badz]

I currently have 2gb of ram. I have home premium 32 bit. Would I see an improvement in games if I just added 2 more gigs of ram?

You can never have enough RAM, even though a 32bit OS won't totally use all 4 gigs it will toss it up for more memory space making the system run better. The price of RAM nowadays everyone should have at least 4gig.

 

[pinaplex]

I currently have 2gb of ram. I have home premium 32 bit. Would I see an improvement in games if I just added 2 more gigs of ram?

you won't see much improvement in games in terms of FPS. but you will notice that they run a bit smoother. but for a 32bit OS, the jump from 2gb to 4gb is pretty minimal for performance. since the system can't utilize all of the extra 2gb, in reality, you're adding only about 512mb-1.5gb of usable memory. not a huge difference.

 

[Blako]

I agree with Mike, use task manager to log your peak memory usage (whether it be a game, google earth, or crysis editor ) Is it correct to say that a 32bit operating sys can reconize roughly 3.5GB of ram? But 2GB of ram at $40 is temping. If you can use more then 1.8GB of your ram then you might see an improvement going with the added memory. But if your favorate game only uses 1.5 out of your 2GB it might not be necessary. CarMan, why don't you find your memory usage at idle, average load, and maximum memory load, then post your finding for us to evaluate.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/15/vista_workshop/page5.html

“4GB” maximum memory limit of 32-bit Windows is purely theoretical. In practice, the max memory is something significantly less, equal to 4GB minus your video card memory and the address space allocated to a couple other hardware resourcse. Typically, the realistic maximum memory is somewhere betwee 2.5GB and 3.5GB.

To answer your question, “does it have any effect on the OS or at the hardware layer to run in this configuration?”: It has no effect whatsoever. It’ll behave just like the unused memory wasn’t physically present.

From: http://www.vistaclues.com/reader-question-32-bit-vista-memory-limits/

 

[geofelt]

Use Task Manager to check peak RAM use after a gaming session and see how much RAM you used, if more than 2Gb, you need more physical RAM.

Mike.

How can the peak ram used ever be more than what you already have? 4gb can give a program more, if it is coded to use it, or, allow a higher level of multitasking without paging interference. As others have posted, 4gb does not cost much more these days.

 

[dengamle]

How can the peak ram used ever be more than what you already have?

The paging file. If you often stress this file, more ram will be useful