[SOLVED] Can I have more than 4gb ram on win 7 32bit?

[GabrielTheNoob]

today I upgraded my pc from 2 gb to 4 and Im wondering if i can add the other 2 gb to my system , my motherboard support 8gb maximum!

 

[jeremyj_83]

While the motherboard can support 8GB or RAM, 32bit Windows can only support 4GB. You would have to go to 64bit Windows to have support for more than 4GB RAM.

 

[USAFRet]

today I upgraded my pc from 2 gb to 4 and Im wondering if i can add the other 2 gb to my system , my motherboard support 8gb maximum!

No. You're not even using the whole 4GB.
32bit gives you access to ~3.5GB.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

You can have 8gb ram in your system, but you can't use more than 3.5-4gb.

 

[geofelt]

Simple answer:
Yes, you can have more than 4gb on your sustem.

Longer answer:
You did a very good thing upgrading from 2 to 4gb.
You probably had only 1.5gb or so available to use, now you have 3.5gb.
A 32 bits can address up to 4gb so a 32 bit os can not use more than 4gb of ram.
Past that, a 32 bit os must reserve some ram for fixed buffers below the 32 bit line so you effective ram available will be less than 4gb.
Likely something in the 3.5gb range, depending on the hardware installed.

If you were to run 64 bit windows you would have access to all 8gb.

 

[Hardly_Qualified723]

First off, as stated above, any 32 bit Windows max is 4GB or approx 3.2-3.5 depending. I know this from having multiple x86 I always swapped my 4GB of ram into generally although those are not my exact numbers (read below).

So this is still solved, but for future reference and other people...

I have 32 GB Ram on Windows 7 x64 and it says i'm using almost all of it, I program so I understand the address space...but I never considered it before, I found this little snippet on SuperUser and take no credit for it.

You use MS Windows, the maximum memory is constrained by the operating system.

For Windows 7, the maximums are:

Starter: 2GB
Home Basic: 8GB
Home Premium: 16GB
Professional: 192GB
Enterprise: 192GB
Ultimate: 192GB
Windows Server 2008 ranges from 8GB for entry level to 2TB for the top of the line.

See Max Memory By Windows Version (MSDN) for a full-ish list.

These limits are primarily for marketing reasons. By restricting the cheaper versions they make the high-end versions (comparatively) more attractive.

I think that recent Linux builds work with around 32TB of RAM, although not all hardware can support that.

They continue to debate the max is 64-128GB due to paging and 48-52 byte address space being all you actually get to use.

I plan on doing some further reading myself, as I did know Windows had limits, but I didn't know the exact math.

if anyone else has any interest in this, the post can be found here...

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