what is the max ram you can use with xp pro please?

[Colin Crow]

for xppro 32 bit the maximum is 4gb but only 2gb will be available for processes the rest being available for windows executive programs(?) by default. The is a switch in boot.ini that can increase this to 3gb. Incidentally xp 64bit can handle 128 GB!

Colin

PS vista home is running 4gb on my pc with no probs

[Nick Minall]

Found this Chris, also need to look at the mother board spec to.

Nick.

[David Glen]

Chris, I think it is 4Mb but depends on your motherboard.

I recommend this excellent freeware program for getting information on just about everything about your system and software.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Sys … /SIW.shtml

It doesn’t need installing – just runs from the program file.
It will tell you straight away what maximum ram you can fit and how much per slot.
It also has a useful tool for revealing what’s under the asterisks in password entries in case you forget.
Guaranteed free of spyware, it just does the job.

[Peter Normington]

I got 4gig installed but only3 recognised by xp pro.
Peter

[Chris Wool]

thank guys got me mb and gbs round me neck again 😳

well i put 2GBs in the new comp so i might leave it at that but on the other hand it aint dear stuff these days is it.

thought i would treat the lad to a bit of desk top real estate twin 22inch widescreens.
what with raid rams dvds dvi sata 3 gigs something my heads spinning

working well so far

chris

[David Glen]

quote Peter Normington:

I got 4gig installed but only3 recognised by xp pro.
Peter

Peter, if you use the Software Information for Windows (SIW) linked earlier you might find that it is the motherboard which is limiting the ram rather than XP. Just a thought.

[Peter Normington]

Thanks David, I use sisoftware sandra for analysis. it is an asus mboard,
the memory shows, but is not used, I think it is the mainboard,
Peter

[David Glen]

Peter, I’ve just done some reading on the Sisoft, came out very well against similar programs. Due you have the free lite version or the full.
I am interested in the tests it can run on various components and compare against benchmarks.

[Peter Normington]

David I have the home pro edition.
I bought it to help solve memory error messages i was having,
in looks fairly comprehensive but I am not an expert on Sandra, and not used all its facilities.
It does offer many benchmark tests though,

(The memory errors were being caused by an external "one touch" hard drive, used for backup)

Peter

[David Glen]

Cheers, I’m going to look into it.

[Jason Xuereb]

Is the 64bit Xp version backward compatible with 32 bit applications?

Does anyone know if photoshop is going to have a 64bit release soon?

[tived]

quote Jason Xuereb:

Is the 64bit Xp version backward compatible with 32 bit applications?

Does anyone know if photoshop is going to have a 64bit release soon?

Yes, x64 is backwards compatible – unfortunately! So much for progress!

I doubt that you will see a x64 bit version of Adobe product anytime soon. Apparently there isn’t that many features in Photoshop that can take advantage of the wider data path.

You can access more memory in windows xp x64 and Vista x64, and photoshop can use more memory in x64 compared to x32.

I have two machines one (Dual Opteron 285, Dual Core) running xp x64 with 8gb and an Intel Quadcore 2.66 with 4gb running vista Ultimate x64, non of them would run FlexiSign 8.1 :-(, but I have CS3 Design Premium and that is running very nicely.

Hope this hepls

Henrik

[tived]

It is my opinion that currently XP x64 is more stable atm and have better driver support compared to Vista x64, but this will all change within the next year.

Henrik

[Jason Xuereb]

Cheers mate.

Do you use photoshop for larger files? Whats your hard drive setup?

I’ve read so much on the net lately I’m a little confused to what computer to build next.

Alot of things I’ve read have said the bottle neck for photoshop etc is the hdd because you can’t have enough memory on xp 32bit. But if you can run 64bit and have 8GB of ram then most of my work would remind in memory instead of being written to the hard disk.

I’m also told that having a dedicated hard disk for photoshop scratch disk improves performance also.

[steve day]

just to add to this, i just installed 4 gig of ram onto an XP 32 bit machine and it recognises 4 gig in bios but only shows 3.25 gig in windows it self. It does help with massive graphics, almost the same as using small graphics 😀

[tived]

as the above, I have had no luck installing XP x32 on one of my workstations, with 8gb of ram. Though XP x64 and Vista x64 loves it

Henrik

PS: and to have more then 2Gb you need to use the /3Gb switch to access the address space above 2gb

PPS: just to add to what Jason so rightly said, a dedicated hard disk for scratch disk is an improvement, but a raid 0 for scratch disk is twice as good 🙂 which is why I have 8 disks in my workstation

[Jason Xuereb]

tived,

What are you designing 😛

[tived]

Hi Jason,

I do mainly photographic retouching and color management for other photographers, and only recently joined one of my friends in his sign-writing business.

I did prepress back in 2000, but haven’t done much since, so I am a bit rustic in that department.

so nothing that exciting.

Henrik