RE: I have a question regards memory upgrades having installed Win7 32&64-Bit.

Hello. I have a serious question that needs to be answered regarding memory upgrades and Windows 7.

I have the ASUS P5Q motherboard with the Core 2 Quad Professor (Q9550). I also have Windows 7 Professional, 2 licensed copies. Now, on one hard drive partition I have Windows 7 Professional 32-Bit. On the same system on another hard drive partition, I just installed Windows 7 64-Bit. Now, right now I have a total of 4 GB of the CorsairXMS2 memory installed [DIMM-RWIN2x4096-6400C5 -or- Corsair 4 GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800 (PC2-6400) Dual Channel Memory, 240-Pin, Non-ECC, Unbuffered] on this system. No issues so far with 32-Bit & 64-Bit versions of Windows 7 with the 4 GB of RAM. Now I plan to buy another 4 GB of the same memory modules to have a total of 8 GB. Now, I know the 8 GB is rated great for the Windows 7 64-Bit. Now, what about the 8GB for the Windows 7 32-Bit??? Any issues having that much memory (8 GB) for the Windows 7 32-Bit??? I mean I am not about to take out EACH TIME the extra 4 GB when I boot into Windows 7 32-Bit from the motherboard.

Please reply.

Thank you

 

The ONLY difference between 32-bit and 64-bit is the amount of memory it can address, in the case of 32-bit that limit is 32^2 (4GB). The processor cannot see any memory above that limit so it is simply be ignored.

 

I don't think it will be an issue. From what I understand, the 32-bit versions of Windows 7 can only address 4GB of RAM (except for the starter versions, which address only 2GB in both 32 and 64 bit).

What that means is, lets say, your video card has 1GB of onboard memory, and your system ram is 4GB. The system will "address" or recognize the video RAM, and only 3GB of the system RAM, for a combined total of 4GB. The other 1GB of RAM is there, but the operating system cannot "see" it, therefore it simply does not get used.

When booting into the 64-bit Pro version, the OS will report a combined total of physical and video RAM as 9GB.

I have never seen Win7 in this configuration, but I did check out a system that had XP 32-bit and Vista 64-bit. It seemed that in XP mode, the extra memory above 4GB was just ignored by the operating system.

 

XP 32-bit is ENCODED IN 32-bit, so it is physically impossible for any number higher than 32^2 (4GB) to be handled by the OS, including memory addresses. XP isn't ignoring it, there is simply no way it can see it.

 

Thank you for your replies!

 

Just need to correct my explanation. The 32-bit limit is of course 2^32, not 32^2 I said earlier. 2^32 is 4,294,967,296, hence 4,000 MB roughly.

Sorry - was more interested in how to post a power sign than in what I was actually saying :-o