Behind the 4GB Memory Limit In 32-Bit Windows

An anonymous reader points us to a very detailed post by Geoff Chappell, first put up early this year, explaining how the 4GB memory limit commonly bandied about for 32-bit Windows (he is writing mainly about Vista) is more of a licensing preference than an architectural limit. The article outlines how Chappell unlocked his system to use all the memory that is present, but cautions that such hackery is ill-advised for several reasons, including legal ones. "If you want [to be able to use more than 4GB in Vista] without contrivance, then pester Microsoft for an upgrade of the license data or at least for a credible, detailed reasoning of its policy for licensing your use of your computer's memory. ... [C]onsider Windows Server 2008. For the loader and kernel in Windows Vista SP1 (and, by the way, for the overwhelming majority of all executables), the corresponding executable in Windows Server 2008 is exactly the same, byte for byte. Yet Microsoft sells 32-bit Windows Server 2008 for use with as much as 64GB of memory. Does Microsoft really mean to say that when it re-badges these same executables as Windows Vista SP1, they suddenly acquire an architectural limit of 4GB? Or is it that a driver for Windows Server 2008 is safe for using with memory above 4GB as long as you don't let it interact with the identical executables from Windows Vista SP1?"

Comments

Wa wa what?

[binarylarry]

Does 64-bit cost more than 32-bit now?

So is that the reason that Linux has the same limit?

Why is this on the front page?

Re:Wa wa what?

[Annymouse Cowherd]

Linux does not have the same limit

Re:Wa wa what?

[Binestar]

Price is the same. In fact, you can barrow someone's 64 bit disk and use your 32 bit license key to to install 64 bit Vista. It is on the front page because it is quite interesting.

I have a feeling he hit it on the head when he mentioned third party drivers as being a possible reason for the limit.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux doesn't have the same limit. Use of the 32 bit PAE (Page Address Extension, I think) kernel enables access to 64GB of ram, much as 32 bit server 2008 does. Limiting ram to 4GB on a 32 bit system is a software, not a hardware limit. 64GB is the actual hardware limit once software workarounds are applied, to the best of my knowledge.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Icegryphon]

yes, PAE has been around forever infact you can enable it in Windows 32bit versions,
But it wont do you a lick of good in MS windows, except for a very few version of windows.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx

Re:Wa wa what?

[binarylarry]

I hate to break this to you, but Windows now runs on Intel processors as well!

Imagine that?

Re:Wa wa what?

[space_jake]

Doesn't work with an OEM license, but the retail or whatever it is called gives you both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Vista, though you may have to request the 64-bit cd from Microsoft if it was not included.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lumpy]

Funny... What version of linux are you using that has the same limit? Slackware and Ubuntu don't have that limit.

Re:Wa wa what?

[eldavojohn]

In fact, you can barrow someone's 64 bit disk ...

Barrow:

A mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves.

Your plan to put 64 bit copies of Windows in the ground and cover them with grave stones and dirt intrigues me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Binestar]

I have added you to my newsletter as requested. Email confirmation should be received in 1-2 hours.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

So is that the reason that Linux has the same limit?

Unless I'm misunderstanding you and the summary (not RTFAed yet - I know, I'm bad) Linux doesn't necessarily have the same limitation. The summary seems to imply that only 4GB of *physical* memory are being supported on 32-bit systems by some versions of Windows. All OSes running on 32-bit x86 are restricted to a 4GB virtual address space, therefore neither Linux nor Windows can offer more than 4GB of directly addressable memory *per process*. But many 32-bit x86 CPUs can address more than 4GB of physical memory using PAE mode.

The base requirement for using PAE is that the OS supports it - Windows can use it, Linux can too. PAE gets you the ability to address physical memory addresses over 4GB but only if the motherboard has enough address lines to actually relay these requests to the memory. Even if you can't / don't have more than 4GB of RAM installed, it may still be worth it because PAE also lets you use NX (no execute) on 32-bit. PAE on 32-bit doesn't make the process address space any larger, so any given process is still limited to 32-bit pointers.

32-bit Linux has to be compiled with or without PAE support, so your distro should make sure it installs a the right kernel version to correctly support your hardware. Some OSes (e.g. Solaris) can switch between PAE and non-PAE at boot time, so they only need one kernel image to support both modes. I don't know how Windows handles this.

A further benefit of PAE, that I've left till last because it's really somewhat gross: the memory mapped IO regions used by PCI devices also take up part of your physical address space. This can result in a "memory hole" where your *real* RAM is overshadowed by an area of memory-mapped IO regions - the real RAM is there but you can't access it. As a result, if you put 4GB of RAM in your system and use a non-PAE kernel (only 4GB of physical address space) then you are *guaranteed* not to be able to use all that RAM because you will *definitely* have hidden some of it "behind" the memory mapped IO regions. If you use PAE mode, the motherboard can potentially remap that "hidden" RAM to a higher physical address, so that you can use it. Not all motherboards support this remapping, even if they *do* support 4GB worth of DIMMs - which is rubbish because they're claiming to support memory that the hardware will never let you actually address. It pays to be wary of this kind of craziness - my mobo has this limitation, which I discovered after buying 4GB of DIMMs (so I stuck one in another PC, which kept me happy in the end).

Uh, sorry to the parent poster, I've rambled a bit off the point I was originally making and probably just told you a load of stuff you already knew!

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It does work with OEM licenses. I upgraded my 32 bit OEM Windows Home Premium to 64 bit by downloading the 64 bit version through a torrent and using my existing key. I had to call microsoft but they approved it.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

But the article seems to be about a licensing-based restriction on allowed physical memory, depending on your version of Windows. So even if Windows and your hardware supports PAE, it may not let you use >4GB RAM. (nb. PAE is potentially useful even if you don't have more than 4GB RAM, since it gets you the NX bit).

Re:Wa wa what?

[eldavojohn]

I have added you to my newsletter as requested. Email confirmation should be received in 1-2 hours.

Mr. Brinestar, confirmation of E-mail confirmation received at 3:31 PM EST:

Subject: Subscription Confirmation for Binestar's newsletter that you requested on slashdot.

This is an automated email confirming your subscription to Binestar's newsletter as requested in your slashdot post here: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1347281&cid=29191073

There is currently no way to remove yourself from this newsletter subscription. I hope you knew what you were doing when you subscribed!

Having completed reading your first newsletter (posted above), I found it vapid and devoid of the call to Microsoftalypse that I look for in all the periodicals I read (most notably my own newsletter entitled eldavojohn's Microsoftalypse that has a staggeringly high readership of a one eldavojohn of Slashdot.org).

Furthermore, to my horror, I noticed it was sent using an account from a hotmail.com address. Considering this datum, I found your footnote warning eerily apt. I shall post a scathing review of your newsletter (seven times longer than necessary) under the guise of frequent and unquestioned Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton on the morrow. Good day, sir!

Re:Wa wa what?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It would be pretty hard to get worked up about what you lose from the memory mapped regions(except on aesthetic grounds), except that your video RAM is one of those regions. All the weird legacy stuff below 16 megabytes is very nearly a rounding error; but with cheap, basic graphics cards packing 512megs(and high end cards pushing 1.5gigs, and possibly more than one card per system) you can exhaust a fair slice of the first 4GB that way.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Linker3000]

Meh, us Linux users sneer at your pathetic Windows barrows. We put our stuff in SSH tunnels.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Your Anus]

Isn't DMA limited to 4GB on most devices? That would make it hard for a device to work with memory that is remapped. Linux does support 64GB with PAE on 32-bit, but the extra work to support PAE hurts performance. Even linux kernel folks recommend 64-bit when you get above 8GB or 16GB.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

I hadn't realised that the video RAM was in those regions. I guess it makes sense, though, it has to be somewhere :-) That's going to be a bit hit in physical address space right away.

However, AIUI the other PCI MMIO regions can also waste more space than you'd expect since (depending on the machine) the BIOS sometimes sets them up in a sucky way and wastes way more space than it needs to. Which sucks.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

Yeah, if you have a device that can't DMA above 4GB (as you say, this is common) in the case where you're DMA-ing to memory about 4GB the kernel often has to allocate "bounce buffers" in lower memory, DMA to them, then copy using the CPU.

That's the case for 64-bit systems, too. But with a 64-bit address space available, the kernel can probably keep mappings to all memory so that the copies are faster (I assume it does but I don't work with 64-bit and have never checked). On 32-bit, the kernel would have to create a temporary mapping each time a copy was needed, which would slow things down even more.

There seem to be a surprising number of systems out there that have >4GB of memory but are not 64-bit capable though - lots of people bought lots of cheap RAM for their 32-bit servers.

Re:Wa wa what?

[thisnamestoolong]

Does 64-bit cost more than 32-bit now?

So is that the reason that Linux has the same limit?

I think that it is more related to the reason that 2+2=5 and the Earth is flat -- in that it doesn't.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the other side to Microsoft, sir? Your sentence in your sig seems to have been cut off.

Re:Wa wa what?

[codeguy007]

If you have an AGP video card you will not be able to access all the memory. AGP video is memory mapped just below the 4GB mark.

Re:Wa wa what?

[space_jake]

I tried via the microsoft site to get a 64-bit CD shipped but it would not accept my 32-bit OEM license key. I called to see what the deal was and they told me I couldn't because I had an OEM license. I guess persistence is the real key.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Locutus]

but with something like Linux and how it is developed, you don't have it being designed for marketing. With Windows, Microsoft does things like restrict the number of TCP/IP connections either in software or in their license. They disable part of the system to limit its usefulness and sell it at a lower price as in Windows XP Starter Edition and almost did the same with Windows 7 with all that talk about only being able to run 3 applications.

So there's been a hardware based solution to this since the days of the Pentium Pro( early 90s ) and it is used by open source while Microsoft uses the 4GB limit as a tool to get people to pay up. Surprise, that's why Microsoft has so much of your money in their bank account. These kinds of things are old news but it always helps to let others know that in the open source world, these restrictions and/or features get worked around to improve the product instead of getting used to extract money.

LoB

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell they definitely won't send you a disc for the OEM copy... but according to several sources that I have read it is completely legal to obtain a 64 bit copy another way and do the install. They just won't provide the media.

Re:Wa wa what?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Uh, sorry to the parent poster, I've rambled a bit off the point I was originally making and probably just told you a load of stuff you already knew!

Aw come on, admit it - you typed that sentence first didn't you!

Re:Wa wa what?

[shentino]

In other words, Windows is bona fide crippleware.

Re:Wa wa what?

[GreatBunzinni]

The article you failed to read pointed out that, although some Windows distributions claim to support PAE, they still artificially set the 4GB limit while the same machine running a PAE-enabled linux kernel benefits from a 64GB limit.

So, as GP rightfully pointed out, no, linux does not have the same limit as Windows.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If you remap the memory from 3.5-4G above 4G, you can put the PCI memory there and stick the .5G of ram on the end of your existing RAM.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Wesley Felter]

I thought the BIOS could just remap the rest of your RAM above 4GB, as shown in the article.

Re:Wa wa what?

[AcidPenguin9873]

I think some graphics cards either don't need the GART at all (can do high DMA natively), or don't need all of the GART's entries (maybe they just need a few). If GART hardware is present, the OS can effectively hijack some of the GART entries and use it as a general-purpose IOMMU, allowing devices limited to 32-bit DMA to do DMA to high addresses without bounce buffers by using the GART to translate from 32-bit space to high addresses .

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

Often would have done - but this time ;-) I thought of it roughly in the middle of the rest of my ramble. Maybe I'm just slow today!

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

Mmmm - there was a guy at AMD (I think) working on (ab)using the GART to remap DMA so that virtual machines could drive DMA-capable hardware without knowing about the real memory layout on the host. He was doing this for Xen (which I also do work with, sometimes) but I don't know what came of it.

General purpose IOMMUs are good for all kinds of tasty stuff, so it would be nice to have them more widely available - it seems to be coming.

Re:Wa wa what?

[petermgreen]

Yeah as TFA says MS limits the physical address space in current client versions of windows (IIRC XP SP1 did not have this limitation but that is no longer supported). The author of TFA has found a way to hack out this limitation.

IIRC MS claims they do this due to driver compatibility issues, the MS haters would claim it's just to push people to the server versions. I suspect the reality is a bit of both.

Re:Wa wa what?

[jim_v2000]

What the hell is a Windows "distribution"? This isn't Linux.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Plekto]

I'd also like to add that it gets crazier since you have to deal with the CPU and the chip set as well. If your CPU has a 32 bit memory controller section in it, PAE does nothing. This includes almost all Intel CPUs other than the newest 64 bit ones. But it's more insidious than that, even. People who are trying to use PAE on Linux and on homemade "Hackintosh" setups are finding that the Intel 64 bit chips work in either 32 bit or 64 bit mode. IE - if you are using a 32 bit OS, the 64 bit addresses and sections are just simply turned off. You have choice A or choice B. Blame Intel here.

So long story short, you need an AMD 64 bit processor (though I believe the *very* newest Intel 64 bit ones finally do this as well now, but they are expensive) which has the ability to use 64 bit memory space even when running in PAE/32 bit mode.

Then you have the second issue, which is the memory controller on the motherboard. If it's not 64 bit capable, it hits a wall as well. This includes ALL Intel chip sets, which enforce the same "32 bit/64 bit make choice A or B" nonsense as I wrote about above. If either link in the chain is messed up or hits a problem, you simply can't have more than 4GB on any single process.(the usual point why I get asked this is because someone is trying to run Photoshop or editing software and needs 6-10GB for that one process) Also, certain boards cheap out and have 32 bit only controllers as well - so you often have to look for a specific model as Lemming Mark mentioned above. In short, you need to get lucky or use a dedicated server board. This is a source of endless frustration for people trying to make home-made Macs work with more than 4GB. (and it's a very small list of combos that actually work at that)

So the CPU has to support PAE, the motherboard, the Northbridge, and the chip set/BIOS. Because more than half of the CPU market is/was using Intel's crippled designs and Microsoft don't want people's machines bricking 90% the time they tried to run more than 4GB(due to needing all four variables to work together for the PAE hack to work), Microsoft limited 32 bit to 4GB/turned PAE off, and left the 64 bit to the pros who knew how to do it.

In short, just buy a 64Bit capable OS and board and run it that way rather than trying to juggle all the variables. You've spent the money on a 64 bit processor, 8+ gigs of DDR3 memory, and a 64 bit capable motherboard, so there's no reason to cheap out and try to stuff an old haggard excuse for an OS on top of all of that.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The limitiation comes from two areas:
1. Backwards compatablity with drivers not coping with >4GB physical addresses. Linux doesn't have this issue as drivers are typically 64 bit clean and anyway, you can check the source.
2. Licensing limitations (the main cause of the problems.)

Windows boots into PAE if the /PAE switch is on the kernel command line, or if the /NoExecute switch is present; which needs PAE on to implement NX as you point out. One image, chosen at boot time, although I wouldn't be surprised if PAE is normally *on* for the vast majority of Windows installs out there because NX is used by default ever since Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Annoyingly, the limits in Windows are not the amount of RAM, but the Amount of Physical Address Space. Thus, even if your motherboard does the remapping as you say, you still can't use 4GB of RAM on standard 32 bit editions of Windows. (Trust me, I've tried.) You need enterprise or datacentre.

Contary to what a lot of commeters here think, turning on PAE does NOT break drivers *at all* anywhere. It's the addresses above 4GB that do. And AWE is available on ALL windows versions.

There's a good summary at http://blogs.msdn.com/carmencr/archive/2004/08/06/210093.aspx

(AWE is expanded memory, 32 bit OS edition really. Lets 32 bit programs use over 4GB of RAM by letting them remap a window between their virtual address space and the physical space underneath.)

Linux has absoultely no incentive to disable features in order to push higher-priced editions and if a driver is broken, they fix it. That's why these issues don't exist on Linux. :)

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny... What version of linux are you using that has the same limit? Slackware and Ubuntu don't have that limit.

Yes and no. If you install the standard 32 bit version of Ubuntu, you have a limit of (a bit less than) 4 G but you can get 4+ G by installing the server kernel. The reason is that they made a policy decision on the kernel compile options which, for the desktop, didn't include the hugemem patch. You could also take the standard kernel source code and recompile with hugemem enabled, but installing the server kernel is easier and it will probably not make a lot of difference for a lot of people.

I don't know about Slackware but I would guess that the same applies.

Re:Wa wa what?

[pwizard2]

If you have an AGP video card you will not be able to access all the memory. AGP video is memory mapped just below the 4GB mark.

AGP is practically obsolete these days, so I doubt that would be an issue for most people. All computers I've seen within the last 4 years or so have not had AGP ports in them but use PCI express. (My oldest machine from 2003 has AGP but I only use that for low-end server purposes and there is no card in there right now anyway)

Re:Wa wa what?

[c6gunner]

So there's been a hardware based solution to this since the days of the Pentium Pro( early 90s ) and it is used by open source while Microsoft uses the 4GB limit as a tool to get people to pay up.

That's complete bullshit. If you purchased the 32 bit version of Vista, you can go on the Microsoft website and order the 64 bit version for a little more than the cost of shipping. Or you can just buy 64 bit to start with - there's no price difference between the 32 bit and 64 bit editions.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it still depends on the BIOS and hardware, even under Linux. If someone has an AGP system, they probably also have a 32-bit MMU and won't be able to access all 4GB.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

Intel has had 32-bit CPUs with PAE support since before 64-bit CPUs existed. AFAIK they specced PAE and AMD just implemented it. I think it might actually date back to the Pentium Pro, though I've not checked that's true for sure.

However, one source of trouble is that even years after they introduced it not *all* Intel CPUs actually support it. I've generally had the impression that most do, however I suspect they would have disabled it in their budget (and possibly in their mobile) lines. I had a Celeron M laptop that didn't support PAE but as it's both mobile *and* budget I never figured out who to blame ;-) I guess that's not entirely unreasonable as those chips probably wouldn't live in a motherboard that could address any more memory. These days it'd be a bit more annoying to lack PAE, even on small memory systems, since the NX bit depends on PAE being enabled.

I actually thought that all 64-bit x86 CPUs were backwards-compatible with PAE, however what you say seems to contradict this. I wonder if in the case of the hackintosh it's possible that it's a difference in chipset support or MacOS behaviour, rather than a CPU problem?

As you say, though, at the end of the day the approach that allows you to make the most of your memory is to have a decent mobo and a 64-bit CPU (of whatever make). That way you can use all physical memory and processes are not limited to a 4GB address space.

If you want the icing on the cake, either get PCI devices that can DMA to all your available physical memory (many won't be able to) or get a system with an IOMMU (and an OS that supports it) to compensate for those devices that can only access limited areas of physical RAM.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

Not only that but I have to call FUD, as there is a REASON why 32bit XP and Vista don't support more than 3.25 and it AIN'T about licensing. You want to know why? One word-drivers. I have found that there are plenty of seriously flaky drivers that act buggy as hell if PAE is used, and that is with the standard 3.25Gb limit. Capture cards, some of the older Sata and IDE cards, and those are just the ones off the top of my head that I have run into personally.

So while there are those that want to scream about MSFT and look for any reason to have a shitfit, considering the 64bit and 32bit OS editions are the same price it makes no sense. More likely MSFT tested extending PAE like they allow with 2K3 and found that non server (read Cheap Chinese Crap) drivers get uberflaky and fuck up with large amounts of RAM enabled. This of course would lead to a HUGE spike in the "Why don't my shit work? Fix it!" calls to MSFT, and they decided it just wasn't worth the hassle. At least with X64 they can say "Hey it ain't OUR fault, as we didn't build the device. Contact the manufacturer for a driver" whereas with 32bit folks would go "I GOT a &%&^ driver! Your OS don't work!" thus raising support costs.

So in a way it IS a business decision, but it ain't got to do with licensing. It has to do with the millions of 32bit drivers out there, a probably not insignificant amount of which don't play nice with PAE over 4Gb.

Re:Wa wa what?

[mysidia]

The 'crappy drivers excuse' is plain FUD. When PAE is enabled, driver code doesn't operate in PAE space.

The extended address space is used by apps' user memory area, not drivers, that get loaded in kernel memory.

Device drivers don't and shouldn't be aware of the extended memory areas, they only need to know about the address spaces used for DMA operations.

If it were an issue, Microsoft could very easily leave PAE off by default, and only allow it to be turned on when all your drivers are properly WHQL certified for PAE installs.

Re:Wa wa what?

[dbIII]

It's to describe everything you get given on the install media because technically a solitaire game for instance is an application and not a part of the operating system. Just calling it an OS doesn't really fit, and there are a lot of different versions of MS Windows you can get with just a few differences on the install media. The server versions have a lot of the same binaries.
Personally I'd call it different versions of MS Windows but I think the above poster thought distributions was close enough.

Re:Wa wa what?

[mysidia]

Example of several Windows distributions:

Windows XP

Windows XP Media Center Edition

Windows Server 2003

Same cat, different skin.

Re:Wa wa what?

[TheCabal]

32-bit Linux has to be compiled with or without PAE support, so your distro should make sure it installs a the right kernel version to correctly support your hardware. Some OSes (e.g. Solaris) can switch between PAE and non-PAE at boot time, so they only need one kernel image to support both modes. I don't know how Windows handles this.

Yes it can. In the boot.ini file you can specify the /PAE switch, which will load the PAE-enabled kernel at boot-time. In addition, you can specify the /3GB switch, which will enable allow user processes 3GB of memory to use rather than the usual 2.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Plekto]

Well there are two things going on here.

PAE is easy to get working in that you can have more than 4GB of memory. And almost all of the 64 bit processors are backwards compatible. But it's still going to limit you to 2 or 3gb per process because of the other hardware limitations. And that's really the issue. The client doesn't know or care - they want Photoshop to have more memory. PAE *can* work but it's crippled and doesn't accomplish the main goal of adding more memory. To do that it requires all of the variables to support larger than 32bit addressing and playing along nicely with PAE. Almost nothing does, and Microsoft decided to leave that to the Server versions where the admins would know how to deal with it properly if they decided to do so.

And, yes, you get situations of PAE capable chips from Intel that have a 32 bit controller only, which doesn't actually support PAE as intended. So you turn it on and the processes still hits that 2GB wall. If any link in the chain has a 32 bit bottleneck, it fails and your dream of 4gb+ Photoshop remains exactly that.
(note - the kludge for that is/was to install a big ramdisk and run the swap file and cache directory at DDR2 speeds) - not cheap, either.

Apple gets around it with a hack. The most recent OS, IIRC("Snow Leopard" will do this as well) - basically remaps the 32 bit space and extensions seamlessly into the 64 bit native without the A/B issues. It's a kludge but works well enough. You run 64bit all the time but 32 bit apps only "see" 32-bit. Apple apparently spent a hell of a lot of time working this out to keep everyone happy. Windows still forces you to make choice A or B, which is a whole other issue that they rightly deserve to take flak over.

Linux gets around it because it has enough "brains" and foresight to allocate everything properly and make(read - force) it to get along. Driver issues aren't a problem with Linux because every rig is its own custom setup, essentially. The tweaking and kludging that admins normally would do in Windows Server is pretty much normal daily work with Linux. You make the driver work and behave. Not some company who makes a program that is supposed to "work" with a thousand different combinations of hardware. So PAE is tons easier to make happen in Linux. But you can still run into motherboard issues which kill your fun, because almost all motherboards are made with a BIOS that figures it will be running Windows. Some, though, do recognize that you aren't running Windows and play along nicely.

But it's all a headache. Since all Linux apps have to be manually compiled/installed on your box, there's just about zero reason not to run 64 bit.

In short, just run 64 bit. Ten years from now, nobody will care - it will all be 64 bit just like how nobody runs 16 bit DOS software. Plus, 64 bit Windows may have less frills and games and so on(for now), but Windows 7/64 is stable as a rock. It's like running NT all over again - fussy with what you feed it, but no issues otherwise. Since businesses generally run the same 5-10 apps or chose ones that work with their setups and don't change for years at a time, 64 bit is also perfect there. Gamers, well, the companies better start writing clean code and producing 64 bit versions. If it was me, I'd have only releases 64 bit Windows 7 and forced everyone to adapt.

Re:Wa wa what?

[nurb432]

I am surprised ( and disappointed ) that FreeBSD has a similar inherent limit.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

I was just wondering whether Windows could support PAE and non-PAE with the same kernel binary - like Solaris and unlike Linux.

The /3GB switch intrigues me - surely there must have been some sensible reason why processes were limited to 2GB (presumably with the kernel taking 2GB). Do you lose anything by applying the switch?

Re:Wa wa what?

[BikeHelmet]

and that is with the standard 3.25Gb limit.

What standard limit? My XP Pro gaming computer has 3.7GB available...

Re:Wa wa what?

[Spy der Mann]

In other words, Windows is bona fide crippleware.

Can that be modded redundant? :P

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

It sounds like you think PAE could, in principle, enable 32-bit apps to support more than 4GB address spaces? Maybe I'm misunderstanding. For avoidance of confusion, that is not what PAE does; if you're using 32-bit + PAE you're *always* stuck with 4GB address space per-process no matter what (and 1-2GB will usually be taken up by your kernel). All PAE gives you is the ability to use more physical memory across the whole system. If you need one app to use lots of memory, as you rightly pointed out, you need 64-bit.

I saw another post on here suggesting that server versions of Windows have an API for giving an app access to >4GB memory on 32-bit but that is going to be some kind of hack (e.g. switching between multiple address spaces for one task or using effectively a big ramdisk like you mentioned), not true >4GB virtual memory.

I don't know exactly about the Apple technique but I do remember seeing a presentation by an AMD chap who was describing how you could use 64-bit to increase the address space available to 32-bit apps. In his example, though, that was "merely" enabling apps to use a *full* 4GB for application data whereas on a 32-bit system 1-2GB of the address space is occupied by the kernel. This sounds like the same kind of thing you're referring to. I'd guess it would be tricky to do this without upsetting some poorly or strangely coded apps somewhere along the line. It still leaves you stuck with 32-bit pointers, so really big apps are still ruled out :-(

There were patches developed for Linux to allow a usable 4GB address space (well, probably *slightly* less!) for applications on 32-bit platforms. That meant using a separate pagetable for the kernel and the userspace task and switching back and forth for each syscall. That's going to be expense so you wouldn't have wanted to run those patches unless you *really really* couldn't manage without.

For Linux, 64-bit would be my preference. But my only 64-bit machine is limited to 32-bit non-PAE for "technical reasons" at the moment (meaning the kernel I need to run needs that setup).

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

under the guise of frequent and unquestioned Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton on the morrow. Good day, sir!

Don't you mean, marrow?

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

ME TOO!

METOO@AOL.COM

Re:Wa wa what?

[grege1]

Linux does have a memory limit, it is subject to the same address mathematics as any OS. What you mean is that Linux can use PAE efficiently. Most end users have never heard of PAE and it is not installed by default on any disto I have used. With any 32bit OS you cannot even read a whole 4gb, after everything is loaded you only get about 3.5 of your 4gb. To even use the whole 4gb you need to go 64bit. Motherboards also have chip limitations, not all boards can be crammed with ram even with a 64bit operating system. Linux now has 64bit flash and java and Linux drivers are all 32 and 64 bit by design. I happily use 64bit Debian Sid and 64bit Ubuntu on my machines. FFMPEG can decode anything I need so 32bit codecs are a limitation of the past. Time to move up and move on.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Arthur Grumbine]

You sneer only because you've never faced the evil of a Windows barrow white. Without the help of Tom Bomb-the-bad-DLL you'll never escape his clutches alive!

Re:Wa wa what?

[rhook]

All you need is the certificate file from your existing install and the key that copy of windows was installed with from the factory (not the one on the sticker). Install with the 64bit windows dvd without using a key, install the certificate and enter the key.

Re:Wa wa what?

[cbhacking]

Client versions of Win32 will enable PAE to get the NX bit, but the HAL will block access above 4GB. This is because many drivers used on consumer (client) versions of Windows are not designed to be able to handle 64-bit pointers (even though PAE addresses are only 36 bits, pointers are 64 bits wide anyhow). The way to support this is to compile your driver such that all pointers are *assumed* to be 64 bits wide, and let the high 32 bits go to waste on a non-PAE system. This behavior is required for Microsoft driver signing on newer versions of Windows, but there are a lot of older Windows drivers out there which lack this assumption. Those drivers will explode in an ugly manner if the memory manager hands then a 64-bit address, so only 32-bit addresses are used.

Re:Wa wa what?

[cbhacking]

Good post. Two quick points, though:

Windows ships both PAE and non-PAE kernels, just like most Linux distros. The bootloader selects which binary to run at boot time.

If you use PAE mode, the motherboard can potentially remap that "hidden" RAM to a higher physical address, so that you can use it.

The issue here is that the driver for that re-mapped RAM must support 64-bit pointers (well, technically it must support 36-bit pointers, but practically speaking 64-bit addresses are used and the high 28 bits are ignored). Many legacy Windows drivers (and some legacy Linux drivers) don't support this, and will crash when a pointer overwrites the memory following its 32-bit expected width.Driver crashes are a Bad Thing, so to avoid the danger, client versions of Windows use 32-bit pointers even in PAE mode. This means the (not-even-quite) 4GB limit is still in force, but means you can use legacy drivers. Server editions of Windows permit you to use the full address width (it's a different HAL, I believe)on the assumption that any driver you use on a server will be well-coded and adhere to the guidelines that allow PAE to work.

Re:Wa wa what?

[anss123]

The /3GB switch intrigues me - surely there must have been some sensible reason why processes were limited to 2GB (presumably with the kernel taking 2GB). Do you lose anything by applying the switch?

Besides the kernel's address space being shrunk and some drives crapping out, no. Apps, however, must have a bit set in the executable to get at that extra memory. You can use an app like "CFF Explorer" to set that bit, which also works for 32-bit apps in 64-bit Windows (and can be helpful on stuff like older 32-bit photoshops). OF course, not all apps works with this bit set - presumably because they use signed ints to store pointers.

Re:Wa wa what?

[wwahammy]

Perhaps you have a totally different understanding of kernel and user space in Windows but I thought the total address space was split in half between kernel and user mode. (I think it came be modified so userspace gets 3GB and the kernel gets 1GB though.) Are you saying that with PAE enabled, kernel drivers are loaded only into lowest 2GB and never into the highest 2GB?

Re:Wa wa what?

[swordfishBob]

In other words, there are drivers commonly in use that are incompatible with Enterprise / DataCenter 32-bit editions of Windows Server 2000 and 2003 using PAE.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

it is not installed by default on any disto I have used.

Although you may not have used it, Fedora is a pretty popular distro which includes PAE support during installation when appropriate.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because all the crap it starts doing when you haven't entered the license key doesn't already qualify it enough. >_>

Seriously, even the Win7 RC is crippleware, because it starts crippling the system some time next year.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

Good post. Two quick points, though:

Windows ships both PAE and non-PAE kernels, just like most Linux distros. The bootloader selects which binary to run at boot time.

Ah, cool, thanks! FWIW I did once ask a kernel hacker if the paravirt_ops stuff in Linux (which allows you to hook pagetable updates, etc) could be used to make the same Linux kernel binary work with PAE / non-PAE and he reckoned it'd still require a fair bit of work even with paravirt_ops.

Shipping two 32-bit kernels hardly seems that much of a sacrifice, given 64-bit is the future and will eventually fully take over.

If you use PAE mode, the motherboard can potentially remap that "hidden" RAM to a higher physical address, so that you can use it.

The issue here is that the driver for that re-mapped RAM must support 64-bit pointers (well, technically it must support 36-bit pointers, but practically speaking 64-bit addresses are used and the high 28 bits are ignored). Many legacy Windows drivers (and some legacy Linux drivers) don't support this, and will crash when a pointer overwrites the memory following its 32-bit expected width.Driver crashes are a Bad Thing, so to avoid the danger, client versions of Windows use 32-bit pointers even in PAE mode. This means the (not-even-quite) 4GB limit is still in force, but means you can use legacy drivers. Server editions of Windows permit you to use the full address width (it's a different HAL, I believe)on the assumption that any driver you use on a server will be well-coded and adhere to the guidelines that allow PAE to work.

Interesting.

Are there any specific guarantees about server hardware? e.g. a compatibility list or a server-specific driver signing program? Or do you trust that your system vendor puts well-supported hardware in the box?

A "nice" thing about the Linux approach is that you don't end up wasting pointer space since your driver will be compiled for the correct memory mode when it's built. I can't imagine the wastage is very significant for most drivers, though. And the memory mapping API and DMA API should ensure that high memory are Done Right whatever the memory model but only if they're understood and used correctly by the driver authors. I can imagine that there are drivers doing more or less naughty things that will violate these APIs in interesting ways, though, as you say.

Development-wise, an interesting trick the Linux kernel has up its sleeve is the "sparse" tool Linus wrote, which amongst other things can handle annotations on pointer types to detect cases where the kernel deferences a pointer to userspace, which you usually "get away with" but no always. I understand it's found a fair few real bugs in the kernel so far.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

What if the buggy drivers assume that all physical memory addressable using 32-bits? Many PCI cards can't DMA above 4G. If the drivers are not well tested on >4GB systems then they could barf on this sort of thing. It's not a PAE problem, it's just a large memory problem.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Locutus]

so what was that stuff about having to get the Windows Server kernel to get over the 4GB issue on the 32bit stuff?

Besides, I was also referring to the client TCP/IP connection limit they put in back when Netscape was selling their web server for Windows NT Workstation and providing a solution cheaper than Microsoft's restriction of only running IIS on their Windows Server productline. Games they play...

LoB

Re:Wa wa what?

[gabebear]

3.25GB is the normal limit unless you remap the swathes of memory addresses that are used by the PCI bus for DMA. Even if you are running in 64bit native mode, you need to remap memory addresses to get all your memory. There is usually a BIOS setting called something like "Memory Remap" which enables this remapping.

Support for PAE(36bit memory addressing) and memory remapping are separate technologies, but without PAE there wouldn't be anywhere for the BIOS to remap the memory to.

Re:Wa wa what?

[gabebear]

PAE is 36bit memory addressing support for 32bit OSs. The 32bit Windows Server kernels support PAE and the client versions don't...

This is more of a "because I can" hack than anything useful.

Re:Wa wa what?

[gabebear]

This is a BIOS limitation... if your BIOS doesn't allow remapping the PCI DMA ranges, then ~.75GB of memory in the first 4GB isn't usable. Just use 64bit FreeBSD and turn on remapping in your BIOS.

Re:Wa wa what?

[GoRK]

Not only can you enable it, but it's enabled by default. You can actually boost performance (significantly) on the versions of windows that are capped at 4gb by disabling it, since accessing memory using PAE requires an extra clock cycle (3 instead of 2, for direct access)

Re:Wa wa what?

[mysidia]

In a system with 4GB (or more of RAM), the first 2GB of address space (virtual memory address ranges 0x0 to 0x7fffffff) are for kernel memory, and the rest of the address space (0x80000000 and up) is user memory.

Operating system code and drivers are loaded into memory that is mapped from the kernel address space.

These predictably load (while your system is booting) into the lower physical memory addresses.

Re:Wa wa what?

[c6gunner]

so what was that stuff about having to get the Windows Server kernel to get over the 4GB issue on the 32bit stuff?

It's a stupid hack to get the 32 bit edition to run PAE. I'm not really sure why you'd want to do that when you can just run the 64 bit version instead. Maybe if you have a lot of legacy devices which don't have 64 bit drivers, I guess. Either way, it has nothing to do with money.

As others have pointed out, MS most likely chose to disable this feature because it would have been a nightmare when it came to support. Enabling PAE creates all sorts of potential problems due to the vast variety of hardware and software used by average consumers. The server version supports PAE, probably because server hardware/software isn't nearly as varied, and corporate clients tend to shell out a lot of cash for support.

Besides, I was also referring to the client TCP/IP connection limit they put in back when Netscape was selling their web server for Windows NT Workstation and providing a solution cheaper than Microsoft's restriction of only running IIS on their Windows Server productline.

That's not really surprising. NT Workstation and NT Server were almost identical outside of the domain controller functionality. If MS hadn't put some limitations in place, any small business with a competent IT staff would have purchased NT Workstation licenses for the majority of their servers. I can't blame them for trying to protect an existing market, instead of destroying it overnight. What they essentially did was say "here, you can have NT server for one tenth of the usual price ... but we're going to pull out some features first". I really don't see anything wrong with that.

Time for the obligatory car analogy: It's as if Lamborghini offered to sell me a car for $25,000 that looks and handles exactly like the Diablo ... but is missing a spare tire and is governed to a top speed of 100 mph. Even with the restrictions, it'd be a great deal.

Re:Wa wa what?

[wwahammy]

*nods* That makes sense. Do you know a good reference that talks about that? In my cursory look, I didn't find any details on the NT arch's memory layout, although Win 9x used the upper 2GB for kernel memory. Looking back at your original comment, I guess I'm not totally convinced that there wouldn't be driver issues with PAE enabled, especially considering the thousands of drivers floating around out there.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

Tell that to my cheap ass capture card, that is a good 4x more flaky now that I have PAE enabled. Since I have no intention of getting rid of my nice gobs o' RAM, and I haven't had time to find a card with XP X64 drivers for under $80(If anybody knows of one it would be appreciated) I have just learned to deal with it. For example it will crash more when switching channels in the 25-35 cable range, which is naturally where 3 of my favorite channels are. i have tested it by comparing side by side with my buddies card (we bought ours together on a "buy two and save!" sale) and his you can flip through that range til hell freezes over with no crashes, but he only has 2Gb.

So you can scream FUD all you want, I have seen it with my very own peepers. Now imagine how many millions of devices there are out there with WinXP 32bit drivers. Everything from funky USB stuff to the truly weird ass shit (like that cassette deck I saw a couple of years back) and then figure how much MSFT would have to pay for the "My shit don't work! Fix it!" calls.

It is cheaper in the long run just to make the switch to x64 than it is trying to make a hack work, especially a bad hack like over 4Gb support in an OS released in 2001, when 128Mb of RAM was a common configuration. If you are foaming at the mouth and truly need to hate MSFT for something, hate them for this...XP was NEVER supposed to last this long. Longhorn was supposed to be out in 2K3, and because they decided to start over with the Longhorn reset, that of course ended in the clusterfuck that is Vista, you have an OS pushing the decade mark still in widespread use. XP32 just wasn't built to handle gobs of RAM, and trying to force it down is like trying to drop a Mac truck engine in a Pinto. It is just more of a PITA than it is worth.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

You also have to figure in the memory for the graphics card into that equation. Since I quit using the IGP and went with a 1Gb HD4650 I have noticed I went down from 3.25Gb down to 3Gb. I haven't had time to run GPU-Z but I wouldn't be surprised if 32 bit Windows isn't seeing all of that 1Gb on the GPU, since some of that 1Gb naturally has to be used for the capture card (the only reason I dual boot anymore), USB, PCI, etc.

That is why I made the jump to XP X64. All my games work, even my older bargain bin stuff like Delta Force Xtreme, and jumping from 4Gb to 8Gb cost me a whole $35 after $20 MIR. Sadly the cheap as capture card I have is from a company (Easy TV FM) that went out of business it seems in 2004, plus it is more than a little flaky in PAE. So if anybody knows of where I can get a capture card with XP X64 drivers for under $60, since I don't watch enough tube to make it worth more, please let me know. It can be analog only as all I watch is cable anyway.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

About the client TCP/IP connection limit? While I can't speak for NT Workstation (as I didn't see many hacked versions of that OS) when XP came out the net was flooded with reg hacks that would let you get around the 10 connection limit, and as a PC repairman I unfortunately found out REAL quick why that was a good idea to have the limit for client systems.

It took me awhile looking through connection logs to find out that there was certain malware and especially early P2P apps (early bearshare was the worst IMHO) that if the users had used the "Max connections" hack the app would crapflood the entire network, causing it to either grind down to a virtual standstill, or the cheaper crap would just shit itself and die.

So I can tell you from experience there are certain times you do NOT want the client to have "infinite connections" and since it caused all kinds of nasty when users hacked in more connections I can understand why to not have it by default. This way if the users went ahead and hacked it (which was a simple reg entry and takes all of 3 seconds) then MSFT can say "Hey not our fault, you're the one that hacked it and let the 'crapflood of doom' loose on your network" which I'm sure led to less support hassles. i know whenever I had a client that wanted that hack, usually gamers and P2Pers, I would give them the 'crapflood of doom' speech and tell them if they boned their network they would be paying up, as I don't work for free when you ignore warnings and go for it anyway. So while I haven't talked to a MSFT rep and heard reasons behind it, I can say on XP networks it can be a VERY good thing not to let the users have infinite connections.

Re:Wa wa what?

[CyBlue]

!! Exactly what I was thinking. +1 virtual mod point

Re:Wa wa what?

[X0563511]

... and watch the explosion when one of the PCI devices tries to use DMA, but can't do so above 4gb addresses.

Re:Wa wa what?

[ozmanjusri]

Do you know a good reference that talks about that?

The best source for info for this is likely Mark Russinovich. His blog is the origin of the "difficult to measure risk" quote.

Because device vendors now have to submit both 32-bit and 64-bit drivers to Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Laboratories (WHQL) to obtain a driver signing certificate, the majority of device drivers today can probably handle physical addresses above the 4GB line. However, 32-bit Windows will continue to ignore memory above it because there is still some difficult to measure risk, and OEMs are (or at least should be) moving to 64-bit Windows where it's not an issue.

He also acknowledges the commercial aspect of product differentiation on MS 64-bit OS versions, but suggests that the 32-bit issue derives from actual experience;

64-bit Windows client SKUs support different amounts of memory as a SKU-differentiating feature, with the low end being 512MB for Windows XP Starter to 128GB for Vista Ultimate and 192GB for Windows 7 Ultimate...

the Windows team started broadly testing Windows XP on systems with more than 4GB of memory. Windows XP SP2 also enabled Physical Address Extensions (PAE) support by default on hardware that implements no-execute memory because its required for Data Execution Prevention (DEP), but that also enables support for more than 4GB of memory.
What they found was that many of the systems would crash, hang, or become unbootable because some device drivers, commonly those for video and audio devices that are found typically on clients but not servers, were not programmed to expect physical addresses larger than 4GB. As a result, the drivers truncated such addresses, resulting in memory corruptions and corruption side effects.

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspx

I'd suggest though, the decision to completely disable PAE instead of only enabling it when paired with drivers certified by WHQL as being PAE-safe was a commercial one, based on SKU differentiation rather than risk.

Re:Wa wa what?

[TheCabal]

Two different kernels. With the normal 32-bit kernel, you'll top out at 4GB of memory. Windows loads a PAE-enabled kernel if it sees PAE passed as a kernel argument (much like arguments in GRUB), or you're running on hardware that supports DEP, they system will load PAE-enabled kernel.

By default, on a 4GB system, 2GB is for userland and 2GB is for the kernel. Throw the /PAE switch and the kernel sacrifices a gig for user space. Not all apps can take advantage of the extra memory, but a very memory-hungry app like SQL Server can use the extra memory. Depending on what flavor or Windows Server you're using, you may have to throw /3GB, /PAE or both. Once you get over 16GB of RAM, you're generally looking at using /PAE only in boot.ini and running sp_configure in SQL to configure the use of AWE. MS says that generally you may wind up burning a gig of memory for AWE management. But otherwise, unless you're running an enterprise-class app, you won't get much of anything about of using /3GB or /PAE

Re:Wa wa what?

[c6gunner]

That's a completely different thing. He's referring to an incident where MS limited the number of inbound connections on port 80. They did that specifically to make it impossible for people to run large scale web-servers on NT Workstation. It had nothing to do with security/stability - it was purely an attempt to protect their profit margin.

And, btw, one of the first things I did after installing XP was get rid of that silly TCP/IP restriction. I agree that it was useful for at least slowing the transmission of worms, as well as limiting how effective they could be as part of a DDOS botnet attack, but I had the exact opposite experience from yours when it came to P2P apps.

I'm also fairly certain that you're wrong about it being "a simple reg entry". You actually had to patch TCPIP.SYS in order to remove/modify the connection limit.

Re:Wa wa what?

[TheCabal]

Guarantees... not really any guarantees. Microsoft does have a driver signing program and a Quality Labs for hardware that will certify that the driver and hardware meet their standards (take your cheap shot here), but generally won't make any guarantees. So yeah, I can go to Fry's and get a mobo and 16GB of RAM, and find a copy of Windows Server Enterprise or Datacenter, and it will likely work, but nobody's going to gurantee that it works. If I spend the money buying a real enterprise-class server from a real systems vendor, you'll have better chances that the drivers and hardware have been WHQL certified, and they'll generally be of a better quality than the Fry's hardware.

Usually, the higher end you get, MS will start recommending particular hardware profiles known to run reliably. I'd think twice about any vendor that makes any kind of guarantee that everything will work unless it's been a tried and proven configuration.

Re:Wa wa what?

[snemarch]

Keep in mind that drivers often have to deal with physical, as opposed to virtual, memory addresses. Buggy drivers using only the 32bit low part of the PHYSICALADDRESS union = nice potential for crashes.

The non-SP1 version of XP supported full 4GB of physical memory, with SP1 they limited it to 4GB of address space... the 4GB hinting at milking the market, whereas the SP1 additional limitation says something about driver quality.

As for the memory split, remember that there's the /3GB boot option if you feel like it and know what you're doing :)

Re:Wa wa what?

[ozmanjusri]

MS most likely chose to disable this feature because it would have been a nightmare when it came to support.

If driver_string = "WHQL_PAE_OK"
then goto EnableBigRAM
else msgbox "Sorry, memory above 4GB is not supported on computers with " & $Driver_Version & ", any extra memory will be disabled until the driver is updated.
& vbCrLf & "Please ask your hardware vendor to upgrade their drivers.", vbExclamation, AbortRetryIgnore

Yep, impossible....

Re:Wa wa what?

[mathew7]

WRONG!! WRONG!! WRONG!!
You are confusing virtual (app) memory and physical memory.
Virtual memory is ALWAYS limited to 4GB (with 2/2GB or 3/1GB split of user/kernel) on 32-bit, PAE or not, Workstation or Server.
PAE allows for more than 4GB PHYSICAL memory. That means you could have 2 3GB apps running all in RAM (no swap) in 6+GB RAM.
For ONE app to use more than 4GB, you NEED 64-bit.
Each application page (usually 4K) is mapped to physical space, whether it's RAM or swap (when idle of course). The PAE allows you to map a page on more than 4GB RAM. This is done entirely by OS.
The problem is that drivers need to know the physical address, because that is what HW devices can access. Some drivers are poorly implemented and fail to do this (like giving a 32-bit address when they sould give 36-bit to the HW).
For a server, the company usually has an IT department that can get certified HW (not off-the-shelf cheap HW) and they usually test the server before deploying. So any driver issue can be corrected (either change the HW or resolve the driver issue) before deployment.
So MS did not want to get calls of data corruption and limited PAE on client windows. My problem (and the article's author's) is that WE (tech-savy computer users) cannot activate it afterwards.
PS: PAE was implemented since Pentium Pro. As I recall it already had 36-lines for adresses (that is 64GB memory space).

Re:Wa wa what?

[mathew7]

It is cheaper in the long run just to make the switch to x64 than it is trying to make a hack work, especially a bad hack like over 4Gb support in an OS released in 2001

The hack is PAE, and is HW-related. 32-bit has a 4GB limitation/app which will NEVER be changed (unless recompiling to 64-bit). PAE allows and OS to use more than 4GB, but in client XP (Home/Professional) it was limited by SW.
Pentium Pro (1995) was the 1st processor with PAE (36-bit address lanes). Windows 2000 already had a PAE implementation.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000 :

Windows 2000 Advanced Server is a variant of Windows 2000 Server operating system designed for medium-to-large businesses. It offers clustering infrastructure for high availability and scalability of applications and services, including main memory support of up to 8 gigabytes (GB) on Physical Address Extension (PAE) systems and the ability to do 8-way SMP.

Re:Wa wa what?

[mathew7]

By default, on a 4GB system, 2GB is for userland and 2GB is for the kernel.

Another virtual vs physical confusion.
2+2GB limitation is per process/task/application. This is the SW. If there is not enough RAM, swap is used.
4GB system is a system with 4GB of RAM. This is HW.
No matter how much RAM you have, ONE 32-bit application will NOT use more than 4GB (2+2 or 3+1 if /3GB is used) even on 64-bit OS.
Let's just say that PAE on 32-bit OS allows you to use the above-4GB RAM as super-fast swap space. And this is the XP (as opposed to 2K3 server) limitation: XP just does not let you use it. I'm also thinking it's because of drivers and DMA devices.
PAE is a very old hack.

Re:Wa wa what?

[smash]

no, he means tomorrow. on the morrow = tomorrow.

Re:Wa wa what?

[smash]

In short, just run 64 bit. Ten years from now, nobody will care - it will all be 64 bit just like how nobody runs 16 bit DOS software. Plus, 64 bit Windows may have less frills and games and so on(for now), but Windows 7/64 is stable as a rock. It's like running NT all over again - fussy with what you feed it, but no issues otherwise. Since businesses generally run the same 5-10 apps or chose ones that work with their setups and don't change for years at a time, 64 bit is also perfect there. Gamers, well, the companies better start writing clean code and producing 64 bit versions. If it was me, I'd have only releases 64 bit Windows 7 and forced everyone to adapt.

For what it's worth, i've been running Vista 64 for the past 2 years (now running Win7-64) and most games just work. if they work on 32 bit vista/7, they will generally work on 64 bit vista/7. Even all the way back to Diablo 1.

There are exceptions, but they're generally shitty programmed games that crap out on the 32 bit Vista or Windows 7 OS anyway due to DirectX problems or whatnot. OR, they're *extremely old* and need the 16 bit subsystem for either running the game, or the game's installer. 64 bit windows removed the 16 bit subsystem.

But, for that, there's virtual PC or VMware...

And yes, its been my experience that Vista/7 in 64 bit flavor is rock solid, save death by hardware failure.

I agree that Win7 is the time to go 64 bit, and MS should push it. I'm going through this at the moment at work, however there's still a few (shitty, but mission critical) apps that we have in the workplace that are 32 bit only. Namely banking software dongles, a few software license dongles, etc. Microsoft should have cut off 32 bit after Vista though.... Vista is "close enough" to 7 to run the same apps, be managed by the same tools, etc

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

While I agree completely that PAE is a total hack, all these folks screaming their butts off because MSFT don't allow over 4Gb in client OSes just because they allow it in server is just nuts, which was what i was responding to. A server is a VERY different beast than a desktop, especially in Windows. With a server much more care is usually taken with the drivers, because if it crashes you are costing somebody serious $$$. You are also more likely to be able to contact a server hardware vendor and say "we need support for PAE. Without it we are gonna have to dump your product." and the will comply, because the money in server hardware is much fatter.

In desktops by comparison you have this myriad of funky ass cheap shit from all over the place, vendors can be here today and gone later today (like with my Easy TV FM capture card) and that is if you can even FIND the vendor, as some of this junk has been re-badged by a dozen different companies that just repackage the stuff and don't have jack shit to do with the drivers. It makes desktop support a hell of a lot harder than server. To try to support PAE over 4Gb in XP32 or Vista32 would be support hell for MSFT. In XP64/Vista 64 they can say "Not our fault, we didn't make that. Please find out who did and ask them for a driver" and that's it, end of story. But with PAE on 32bit they would get "I HAVE a *&^%&%$ DRIVER and it STILL don't work! Fix it!!!!" which of course they can't.

So I stand by my original statement that PAE support for over 4Gb would be super expensive for MSFT and just ain't worth the PITA. Whether because of PAE itself being a bad hack (which is the truth, especially if you got the wrong Intel CPU/chipset that as another points out can do 32 OR 64 bit, but not both) or the nasty driver getting flaky because it doesn't have a clue what to do with those wider addresses, either way it equals royal PITA for MSFT. Better just to get everyone to switch over to a REAL 64 bit OS, like XP64 or Vista/7 64 and just be done with it. That way everyone gets real hardware and driver support without the whole thing being a big kludge. And considering I just picked up 4Gb of RAM for a whole $35 after rebate it is just nuts to jump through flaming hoops for a hack like PAE.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

Sorry, at the time I wasn't on my home box so i couldn't look in my hacks folder. looking now I see it was a .bat file and not a reg hack. Still it takes all of 3 seconds, just go "clicky clicky" on the .bat and reboot.

Now about the workstation, considering the workstation was $80 and the server edition was IIRC $500, can you honestly blame them? I would rather be able to pick up a real workstation instead of this bling bling WinVista Win7 crap, like my beloved Win2K pro that I am typing this on, than have to buy a server OS and spend that kind of cash just to get a stripped down workstation. I for one would be happy for their little limitation if it would allow me to pick up "Win2K8 pro" which would just be Win2K8 server as a desktop. They have to limit it somewhere, and not allowing me the huge amounts of incoming connections that a server uses would be fine and dandy with me if I could pick up 2K8 for say $139 like I did XP x64.

Now you may not have liked that they did it that way, but that is one of the things that I like about the free market. You don't like MSFT you've got Linux, Solaris, BSD, Apple, etc. IIRC back then you still had Solaris, BSD, Apple, and I don't know if Linux was stable enough back then to be worth switching to, but you did have choices. i just wish they would go back to the home/workstation split, like they had with Win9x and WinNT/Win2K. I have tried 2K8 and if I could afford it I would buy it just to use as a workstation, but sadly blowing that kind of cash on a desktop is just too rich for me.

Re:Wa wa what?

[gabebear]

Try the 64bit K-TV with your old card http://www.planetamd64.com/lofiversion/index.php?t7188.html or try the generic BT878 WDM driver http://btwincap.sourceforge.net/supportedcards.html

Open source to the rescue... maybe

Re:Wa wa what?

[ztransform]

If you purchased the 32 bit version of Vista, you can go on the Microsoft website and order the 64 bit version for a little more than the cost of shipping.

Unless you bought a laptop with an OEM version in which case the only way you get 64-bit is to pay full price for it (and no, the upgrade version only upgrades a non-OEM existing copy).

Re:Wa wa what?

[hesaigo999ca]

Yes, we all know you Linux users love to put your things in backdoor tunnels all the time.
Yehk!

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

No matter how much RAM you have, ONE 32-bit application will NOT use more than 4GB (2+2 or 3+1 if /3GB is used) even on 64-bit OS.

Not disagreeing with anything you said but thought I'd just note for interest's sake that something approximating 4+0 is also a possibility for user address spaces, even with 32-bit tasks.

On a 32-bit system that implies having a separate page table tree for the kernel (i.e. not mapped into the user process pagetables at all) and switching back and forth on each entry to the kernel. The userspace process then gets 4G to play with (well, probably a few pages less than that, as there'll need to be a little page table switching stub somewhere in there, with kernel-level protections on its memory). I know there were patches for Linux to do this but switching page tables all the time is going to really hurt performance. This is really a 4+4 split since the kernel has an entirely separate address space.

On 64-bit platforms, it's possible to have the kernel mapped into the address space all the time (as you usually would) but put it about the 4G boundary so that 32-bit tasks running in compatibility mode just cannot see it. This is really a 4G+ split but again from the the user process PoV the kernel isn't taking up any space. I heard an AMD chap say at a presentation that you could use this trick to get legacy 32-bit apps a bit more usable memory. Somebody hint in another thread on here that Apple do something like this. I wouldn't know, I don't get to play with 64-bit anything ;-)

Anyhow, not very relevant really but thought I'd chip in.

Re:Wa wa what?

[mysidia]

You do realize, that even in the standard edition of Windows server 32-bit, you are limited to 4GB ?

You have to pay extra for the Enterprise version of Windows server, to get PAE enabled to utilize more than 4GB.

Therefore, in the Windows server platform, even, it is a licensing restriction.

Also, Windows XP 32-bit drivers seem to work just fine on that platform. I have not yet seen such an install encounter issues of any sort that turning off PAE resolves.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Lemming Mark]

Right! That's interesting to know but also slightly disturbing :-) I'm surprised that MS don't have a more structured way of doing this stuff. But given that it does rather sound like they're limiting the use of potentially flaky configurations to people who know what they're doing, which doesn't actually sound too crazy!

It'd still be nice to have a secret legitimate switch on other versions but I'd guess they do value the revenue.

I should really read the article and see if it mentions any of this, I've just been enjoying discussing the beauties of x86 design too much :-)

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or as I do on XP-SP2, put a ram disk there

Re:Wa wa what?

[DarthVain]

Technically incorrect.

If you buy the RETAIL version, then yes. If you buy the OEM version, then no.

I tried this, they basically told me to take a hike.

Re:Wa wa what?

[c6gunner]

Now about the workstation, considering the workstation was $80 and the server edition was IIRC $500, can you honestly blame them?

No, I can't, and if you look at my responses to him you'll see that I made the same argument.

Re:Wa wa what?

[c6gunner]

Interesting. Thanks for the correction. Have you tried downloading a ... ahem ... "unauthorized" version, and installing it using your OEM key?

Re:Wa wa what?

[DarthVain]

I have, though I haven't bothered to install it and try my key as I can't be bothered to yet.

Reading down in the article it sounds like some people have done just that. It will require a phone conversation with MS, but it does apparently work.

MS it seems just won't send you copy, which really inadvertently is promoting the dissemination of their product through shall we say "alternate" channels. Thought I guess this way they save a few pennies on bandwidth or media.

Anyway it seems this has worked in the past, I am not sure about the present or future should it continue. I will likely give it a try at some point.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Locutus]

purely a side effect, this limit was added because Windows had little server marketshare and Microsoft was trying to sell a high priced version of of Windows as a server while at the same time trying to kill off Netscape. When Netscapes web server was packaged and marketed to run on Windows NT Workstation after Microsoft wedded MS IIS to Windows NT Server, sales of Netscapes web server jumped because it was a far far cheaper solution over Microsofts IIS and NT Server packaging. The solution for Microsoft was to impose a limit on TCP/IP connections.And I'd bet that they let businesses know about this legal license change too.

artificially limiting an OS just to segment the market into client and server markets is a marketing trick and one well used by Microsoft. It's something completely different when they bundle applications on top of the OS to enable more server features, but that is not what they did, they crippled the OS to segment the market. And anything they do once has no limit to how many times they'll use that trick. Like no enabling the mid 90s technology called PAE in 32bit Windows desktop OS. IMO

LoB

Re:Wa wa what?

[BeanThere]

Not only that but I have to call FUD, as there is a REASON why 32bit XP and Vista don't support more than 3.25 and it AIN'T about licensing. You want to know why? One word-drivers. I have found that there are plenty of seriously flaky drivers that act buggy as hell if PAE is used, and that is with the standard 3.25Gb limit. Capture cards, some of the older Sata and IDE cards, and those are just the ones off the top of my head that I have run into personally.

You didn't RTA - the author does point this out. However, he also makes the valid point that if you're a hardware manufacturer, e.g. say you make notebooks, then you can provide tested drivers with proper support, and hence why shouldn't hardware manufacturers at least have the choice to enable it on their own hardware lines? It's a valid question.

Re:Wa wa what?

[godefroi]

Ah, but you've probably tested fewer drivers than Microsoft has. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am saying you're working with a smaller set of data than they are.

Re:Wa wa what?

[MikeBabcock]

PAE is no more of a hack than the EMS managers many of us used for the better part of a decade to access our RAM back in the earlier DOS/Windows days.

Re:Wa wa what?

[MikeBabcock]

You missed the pun which was predicated on the previous pun in the g-g-p I believe.

Re:Wa wa what?

[anamin]

For ONE app to use more than 4GB, you NEED 64-bit.

Might want to check out AWE. Pretty sure that my 32bit sql server, running on 32bit server 2003 is using more than 4GB of memory in one process.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hxnwix]

That's complete bullshit. If you purchased the 32 bit version of Vista, you can go on the Microsoft website and order the 64 bit version for a little more than the cost of shipping. Or you can just buy 64 bit to start with - there's no price difference between the 32 bit and 64 bit editions.

PAE was available in Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Datacenter Server. Windows 2000 predates 64 bit windows. Microsoft has been playing this game for a long time, and only recently has a legal way around it become available to Windows users. If you are stuck on 32-bit Windows for driver compatibility, you are still SOL.

Re:Wa wa what?

[yuhong]

"I've generally had the impression that most do, however I suspect they would have disabled it in their budget (and possibly in their mobile) lines. I had a Celeron M laptop that didn't support PAE but as it's both mobile *and* budget I never figured out who to blame ;-) " Indeed, even the higher end Pentium M didn't support PAE until they were forced to because NX required PAE support. What is even more embarrassing about this is that the first version of the Pentium M was released in March 2003, which was right when AMD released the Opteron processor as the first NX capable processor. While Windows was able to work-around this by auto-detecting PAE and NX in the bootloader and selecting the kernel appropriately, Linux's bootloader couldn't and so most Linux distributions defaulted to the non PAE kernels which lacked both NX and support for more than 4 GB of RAM until recently, when installer auto-detection was finally added to default to the PAE kernel for NX capable systems.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

Sorry, tried both and no joy. The closest I ever got was according to device manager with a hacked Hauppguage driver I had the sound show up, but never could find the right tweak in the .ini file to get video working. If you look at the list you gave for a second link you will see there is NO support for the Easy TV FM, which is NOT the same as the Best Buy Easy TV, as one uses the Phillips and the other the Conexant.

Since the card I have is obviously some generic re-badged Chinese crap (as even the app itself has zero links or contact info anywhere) I am pretty much boned when it comes to getting it to work. Also with the first link you have to know not only which chip you are using but it addressing scheme to get the generic to work. Since this is a non name cap card there is no way in hell to have a freaking clue about which addressing scheme, and I tried every NTSC setting in that thing and never got sound or a picture. Hell I bought the thing for $15 on a "buy two and save!" sale, so I have gotten my money's worth out of her. I just need to find a new card that supports XP X64, hell I would even take analog only as I only watch cable, that is preferably under $60 as I don't watch enough tube to make it worth blowing a wad of cash on. I just hadn't had the time to look for one.

Re:Wa wa what?

[gabebear]

Too bad, I haven't dealt with BT878s under Windows much, but under Linux I've been using them for ~10years. I have two different very generic BT878 cards.

It's out of your price range, but the HDHomrunner is a great option if you don't need analog signals http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun . There is also the Sling Box, but it's even more expensive http://www.slingmedia.com/go/slingbox-prohd-connections . I have a HDHomrunner.

Re:Wa wa what?

[gabebear]

Hmm, if you have a older PC to run Linux on, you could install MythTV and throw your BT878 card in their. A 1Ghz-ish class computer can compress raw BT878 video into MPEG4 using MythTV. http://www.mythtv.org/

MythTV is my favorite DVR, and is very easy to setup.

Re:Wa wa what?

[mysidia]

So (umm), do you have an alternate explanation for why they limit you to 4GB of address space in Windows server 2003/2008 Standard, but in Windows server 2003/2008 Enterprise, you are allowed to use all physical memory?

Keep in mind both editions use the same kernel. There must be some configuration and registry bits that are different.

The drivers between 32-bit XP, Server Standard, and Server Enterprise are not different; the same drivers are used in all 3.

Microsoft does not actually test drivers. Only certified drivers that get signed have to be tested according to Microsoft's specifications.

And you can load unsigned drivers into all these versions of Windows (Except 64-bit versions of XP which carries a special restriction that unsigned drivers cannot be loaded)

Re:Wa wa what?

[toddestan]

Most Socket 754 boards were still AGP (that would be the first generation Athlon 64's). However, good luck finding a board from back then that would also support more than 4GB of DDR memory. So I agree, few people are going to be running into that problem.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

I thought MythTV used the client/server method. So wouldn't I need TWO boxes? And the problem with that suggestion is I live in a teeny tiny apartment. I can't really bitch because for $225 I get all utilities and trash paid along with neighbors that are quiet as church mice, but I already have three boxes going-a 1.1Ghz Celery Win2K "nettop", a 733Mhz with an old FX5200 I use for my Win9x gaming rig, and my new baby, my monster AMD 7550 dual core, 8Gb of RAM with 1Gb of GPU RAM bad boy.

I doubt the 733Mhz or the Celery would be good for TV, as the Win2K is busy pretty much 24/7 as my downloader which usually leaves it with only around 100Mb of RAM free. The 733 is maxed out at 384 of PC100 which in my experience usually equals choppy picture, not to mention it uses a funky proprietary PSU that is only 175 watts, so putting anything besides the FX5200 and the USB 2.0 card probably wouldn't be smart, so that leaves the bad boy. I have an old AMD Athlon 1.5Ghz board, but it is a full size board so i would need to build a tower and I just can't figure out where in the hell I would actually put another tower here. If I could find a SFF case where it would fit I could put it under the monitor as a riser, but I have found the SFF cases end up costing too much to make it worth building.

So probably the best bet for me would be to find a cheap analog capture card that has XP X64 drivers. I know they are out there I just haven't had time to look for one. The other problem with going Myth is that it is Linux only, and I have yet to get a Linux box to work out of the box. In fact the only one which a LiveCD actually detected most of the hardware was the bad boy, which since it is my gaming rig would be dual booting anyway. If I am gonna do that I might as well stick with the XP 32/64 dual I have set up now. Thanks for the idea, but me and Linux are two unmixy things.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

Pretty much the only thing I DO need is analog, so neither of those would help, plus I don't actually own a TV since I have always had a cap card I have always just watched TV on my PC and my apartment doesn't have room for another pile of gadgets like a TV and box anyway. I think my best bet is just gonna be finding me a nice affordable analog card with XP x64 drivers. I know they are out there, I just can't blow a lot of cash as the county fair is coming up and my GF really wants me to take her. She has been broadly hinting if I want to get 'extra lucky' (damned curious to find out what exactly is extra lucky) I will take her and try to win her a stuffed animal. What it is with fairs and girls and stuffed animals, damned if I'll ever know

So until I have the time and extra cash to go prowling the net for what I need I'll just have to keep dual booting XP 32/64. Because naturally if it comes down to a cap card or finding out what 'extra lucky' is I am going to have to go with the latter. Scientific curiosity and all, you know?

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running the 32-bit version of Arch Linux on my desktop with the default kernel, and it has that limit. I know I could work round that limit with a different kernel, but I don't really need 4G of RAM and I mostly only use the box for MythTV anyway these days, so I haven't bothered. I did intend to use 64-bit when I upgraded the hardware, but I had trouble migrating the MythTV database to the new install.

Re:Wa wa what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The official MythTV frontend runs on Win/Mac/Linux... except for 64bit Windows... so ya, not a good fit for you.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

Because we have this little thing called "The Internet" and whatever hack they used would spread across the net like wildfire. Just look at how the "unlimited connections" XP hack spread like the clap. As someone who has been building PCs since the days of Win3.x I can tell you that gamers would get a hold of this pretty damned quick. I have seen gamers running all kinds of crazy shit just to squeeze a few more FPS, I even once met a guy who paid for an MSDN just so he could get a copy of XP Embedded and WinFLP to run on his gamer rigs.

Of course even if they managed to tie it specifically to that companies hardware you STILL have the problem of USB and express card devices causing all kinds of trouble when they expect 32bit addresses and they get 36bit. That is most likely the reason why my cap card is so buggy under PAE, as it is from 2004 and doesn't like the 36bit addressing.

So in the end my statement still stands. Server is a VERY different beast than desktop, where their admins do a hell of a lot of work to make sure their purchases work with what they are running. Home users will pick up any generic Cheapo Chinese Crap that is on sale at Best Buy this week. So unless you are advocating making laptops and boxes with NO USB or any other kind of expandability (yeah that would sell well) then in the end they would still have the same royal PITA, it would just be on a smaller scale than if they released it to the general public. With so many millions of XP32 drivers out there, many of which I'm betting will choke and puke on 36bit addressing, it just makes more sense to get everyone over to true 64 bit and be done with it.

Lets face it...RAM sizes are going nowhere but up, even the cheapo boxes now come with 2Gb, and many come with 4Gb, and the prices for RM just keep getting easier on the wallet every day. Like I said after rebate I doubled my RAM, going from 4Gb to 8Gb for just $35. So even if they were to release it the shelf life for 32bit has just about come to an end, and trying to stretch it for another year with a bad hack that will cause more problems than it solves just doesn't make any sense. Even in the enterprise server market where they allowed PAE over 4Gb they advised just going ahead and switching to 64bit. The 32bit PAE mode hack just isn't worth the extra work involved, especially since I've found that even old software works pretty damned good in XP X64 thanks to WOW64.

Re:Wa wa what?

[hairyfeet]

The reason PAE bones drivers is this-PAE uses 36bit wide addresses, and if the card can only send/receive 32bit addresses....well you get the idea. Despite what others have said here I have seen with my own peepers how the 36bit addresses can cause glitching with my capture card.

And since Mark Russinovich, who is pretty much THE go to guy when it comes to low level Windows coding says, and I quote

"Windows XP SP2 also enabled Physical Address Extensions (PAE) support by default on hardware that implements no-execute memory because its required for Data Execution Prevention (DEP), but that also enables support for more than 4GB of memory. What they found was that many of the systems would crash, hang, or become unbootable because some device drivers, commonly those for video and audio devices that are found typically on clients but not servers, were not programmed to expect physical addresses larger than 4GB. As a result, the drivers truncated such addresses, resulting in memory corruptions and corruption side effects. "

I am guessing the video and audio devices of which he is speaking is video capture cards, which of course is something you're not gonna find in your average server, but at least around here is quite popular. And of course there is a bazillion different cheap Chinese analog cap cards floating around out there right now, most with 32bit only drivers. I myself have an Easy TV FM card that I can't find a 64bit driver for to save my life, which is why I have to dual boot XP 32/64. And I can tell you from experience that it is a LOT more flaky and crash prone now that I have PAE enabled. So it isn't so much the memory as the width of the addresses that causes the flakiness. And THAT, not some licensing conspiracy, is why MSFT doesn't allow PAE over 4Gb, because things like capture cards get seriously flaky with PAE.

Re:Wa wa what?

[yuhong]

And even back then, the Athlon 64's memory controller supported memory remapping, unlike desktop Intel chipsets of that era. But not all BIOSes exposed that support back them.

Re:Wa wa what?

[yuhong]

Well, that is true on Intel with it's desktop chipsets (even the 945 did not support memory remapping), but AMD has supported memory remapping on all their AMD64 processors since the beginning.

I don't understand...

[schon]

is more of a licensing preference then an architectural limit

So it's a licensing preference, followed by an architectural limit? If so, how is this a story?

Re:I don't understand...

[sharkey]

No, it's a licensing limit, basically the same limit that existed in Windows NT 4, 2000, XP and 2003. The more you pay, the more CPUs and memory you are permitted to use.

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOOSH!

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Big pet peeve of mine; then vs. than.

People have gotten so lazy in their pronunciation, that they cannot determine which word they are even using. ...sigh

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

I get your point. kdawson can't spell.

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOOSH!

Whoosh!

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you need a colon there instead of a semicolon. </punctuationnazi>

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this particular limit didn't exist until a XP service pack. You can still enable PAE on Windows 2000 Pro if you like.

As others pointed out, its because of device driver compatibility, not because the 64-bit version costs any more money.

Re:I don't understand...

[crabboy.com]

If only the mods knew the difference between then and than...

Re:I don't understand...

[schon]

No, it's a licensing limit

Uhh, OK, so it's a licensing limit, and after that it's an architecture limit? That doesn't make much sense to me.. if there was an architecture limit at all, what does licensing have to do with it?

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

whooooosh

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

<htmlnazi>I think you're missing a starting tag there, buddy!</htmlnazi>

Re:I don't understand...

[sabs]

Spelling is sadly no longer a priority for the average english speaker.

Then, Than, Potato, tomato
Lets call the whole thing off.

Re:I don't understand...

[dubbreak]

No, it's a licensing limit..

I think you missed the point of the parent. Schon was wittily illustrating the grammar mistake (then/than) and the effect it has on the meaning of the statement.

An appropriate response would have been something equally witty such as, "Well I don't know about you but I'd rather have 4GB then 32GB!"

Re:I don't understand...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Also, there should be no comma after "pronunciation" in the second sentence.

He did, however, get the number of periods in his ellipsis correct: 3. Unless that's four periods and Slashdot put the space in there for reasons only known to it.

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pls. explain to us why a 32 bit Windows 2003 Enterprise Server is fully capable of adressing those 8 gigabytes RAM I've installed in it.

--

There are NO physical limit.

Re:I don't understand...

[dbIII]

The point (as I've said for many years since the Pentium Pro came out) is not that any single OS can go past the 4GB, it is that they can all do it apart from the crippled home versions of MS Windows. It's frequently blamed on a poor driver model.

Re:I don't understand...

[msclrhd]

<p class="htmlnazi">The <code>htmlnazi</code> tag is not a valid HTML tag. I think you meant <code>xmltagsoupnazi<code>.</p>

Re:I don't understand...

[msclrhd]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Re:I don't understand...

[magarity]

It's first an architecture limit because in order to handle more than 32 bits' worth of memory the OS has to do 36 bit memory addressing in a 32 bit processor. This means paging the memory addresses used in any given running program. So that's where the licensing part comes in: Vista, being a desktop OS, doesn't include the license for all the extra code that deals with the memory paging.
 
For more info on how the memopry paging works with 32 bits to 36 bits, see page 15 of this Intel architecture doc. If it doesn't make sense, look up CPU registers and how they are used by an operating system.

Re:I don't understand...

[yoyhed]

"English" "Let's"

Re:I don't understand...

[daveime]

Without a DTD, how the hell do we know what is valid ?

Re:I don't understand...

[Herby Sagues]

I understand even less. PAE is only useful for applications that do use it explicitly to handle mass amounts of data in a batch form. It is not useful for real time applications and I know of not a single desktop application that uses PAE. So even if Microsof enabled PAE in 32 bit Windows, no one would be able to use it. And if you are doing a custom application to use PAE on a desktop, shouldn't you be using a real 64bit OS?

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Joke Explainer says "then" and "than" are commonly confused

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, he said html, not xml nazi.

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

32 bits = 2^32 = 4,294,967,296 = 4G of accessible RAM.

Re:I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

You only get a Whoosh with a Wotsit.

Re:I don't understand...

[SScorpio]

The problem is without PAE, if you have 4GB of memory, you won't be able to access all of the memory because hardware devices will be mapped to some of that address space. So if you have a 512MB graphics card, 512MB of addressing space will be taken up so you'd only have 3.5GB (actually less due to other devices).

With PAE enabled with just 4GB of RAM, all of the memory could be addressable by any of the 32bit programs, and the devices would the extended addreseses. Microsoft's concern was that many drivers wouldn't handle this correctly so they disabled PAE.

Seeing that they took PAE support away from XP with SP1, I'm assuming that their testing turned up that their concerns had some merit. With the release of Vista you had the choice of 32bit or 64bit at launch so if you needed the larger amount of memory you just went with 64bit and PAE still wasn't needed.

Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Orion Blastar]

Now they will say nobody needs more than 4G of RAM.

I remember back in the day when 8M of RAM was considered too much.

Looks like Microsoft will force upgrades to Windows 7 to get over the 4G RAM limits?

Ah for the days of the AST Rampage card that got over the 640M RAM limits using EMM/EMS memory standards. Can't someone just write a RAM extender driver for 32 bit Windows for XP and Vista to get over the 4G RAM limit?

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[maxume]

The group of people who own 32 bit computers with enough space for a great deal more than 4 GB of RAM, desperately want that space filled, and really don't want to spend $150 on Windows 7, is going to be quite small (and I'm not sure 32 bit Windows 7 will even fix the problem).

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[rabbit994]

Errr no, Vista x64 runs with more then 4GB RAM without a problem. Windows 7 32 bit still has same limit. Windows 7 64 bit does not. There is a RAM extender called PAE that is used by all the OSes, Microsoft simply chooses not to install it in their desktop OSes because PAE has been known to break drivers and they want to push 64 bits to desktop. 4GB limit doesn't bother most desktop users and those who have more then 4GB run 64 anyways if they are power users. Yes, I consider 4GB+ users to be power users.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[aztracker1]

Nope, Windows 7 x86 RTM (32-bit), with 4GB of physical ram "3.25GB Usable" per the computer properties screen.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[wastedlife]

Looks like Microsoft will force upgrades to Windows 7 to get over the 4G RAM limits?

I doubt 32-bit Win7 will drop this limitation. Also, you can already use more than 4GB RAM in 64-bit editions of XP and Vista.

Ah for the days of the AST Rampage card that got over the 640M RAM limits using EMM/EMS memory standards. Can't someone just write a RAM extender driver for 32 bit Windows for XP and Vista to get over the 4G RAM limit?

Not likely, NT-based OSes (WinNT, 2000,XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, and 7) are not DOS, and the methods of accessing memory are not the same. EMM386 was designed to access higher areas of memory in 16-bit and 16/32 hybrid operating systems(DOS, Win9x + ME). NT is an actual 32-bit OS with flat memory addressing.

Besides, this isn't a technical limitation, this is an imposed limit by Microsoft. They want you to purchase a more expensive version to use more memory. Perhaps someone could make an application that patches the kernel and other system files to allow full 64 GB of PAE addressable space, but would you risk running such a patch? Also, a lot of consumer-level hardware does not support PAE, and so even 4 GB is not addressable in XP or Vista 32-bit. This is because PCI devices use address space, and if the motherboard doesn't support PAE, you will notice that you only have something like 3.4 GB of physical RAM available to use.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[psetzer]

That's what PAE is. To the process, the address space is just one huge flat expanse from 00000000 to 7FFFFFFF. (or BFFFFFFF if the OS is configured that way and the software understands it) To the OS, the processes are allocated RAM in 4 kB pages which are mapped to their corresponding hardware frames in RAM via the page table. When the process accesses an address, the low 12 bits determine where within the page it should read, while the high 20 bits determine the entry in the page table. That entry has the hardware address which it then accesses. PAE allows the hardware address to be larger than 20 bits so that the OS can address more than 32 bits of physical memory transparently to the individual processes.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[stevel]

If your Windows 7 system with 4GB RAM shows less than that "usable", go into your BIOS options and turn off PCI memory remapping. The name of the option may vary and some motherboards may not support this. On my Asus P5B, it is under the North Bridge Configuration. This drove me crazy until I found a forum post describing the solution. Even Windows 7 x64 was showing about 3GB "usable" for me before I did this.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[wastedlife]

Perhaps someone could make an application that patches the kernel and other system files to allow full 64 GB of PAE addressable space, but would you risk running such a patch?

Well, good job for me not reading the entire summary, let alone the article. For those that have not yet read the article, there are details in there on how he patched 32bit vista to use more than 4 GB of RAM. I still think I wouldn't bother, because I'm sure an update will either hose the hack or the OS.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[plague3106]

They want you to purchase a more expensive version to use more memory.

Have a link to pricing? I wasn't aware 64bit Vista was more than 32bit Vista... and if you buy retail ultimate, you get both on one DVD.. so I'm not sure I follow.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[digitalunity]

I bought my laptop recently for $650 and it included 4 GB of memory.

Whether users need it or not, new computers are going to start including more than 4 GB sooner or later by default. The key here is that PAE support exists already in 32 bit Windows, but that Microsoft chooses to disable it for consumer operating systems so they can differentiate the consumer and server OS's.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[PitaBred]

Even with PAE enabled, a single process cannot access more than 4GB of RAM. PAE doesn't help people running Photoshop and CAD apps and so on.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

It does if they're running more than one at the same time.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[MBGMorden]

Whether users need it or not, new computers are going to start including more than 4 GB sooner or later by default.

Which isn't really a problem, in that the newer 64-bit OS's support those quantities of RAM just fine. When XP 64-bit first came about it wasn't really ready for prime-time, but Vista 64 and Windows 7 64-bit are pretty much identical to their 32-bit cousins.

Aside from obscure legacy needs, I don't see any reason why a new user wouldn't go for the 64-bit versions, and if you have to run obscure legacy hardware or software, then you have to (and always have had to) live with some restrictions cause by that.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[jonbryce]

64bit Windows 7 with XP mode will, but you need one of the more expensive versions of Windows 7 to get that. £75 in the UK, apparently a lot more in the US.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Megaweapon]

idk my BFFFFFFF jill?

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Hadlock]

How is XP64 nowadays? I plan to switch to Win7 64 when SP1 comes out but that may be another year or two, and I'm rapidly bumping up against the 4GB limit on a more and more regular basis as a power home user (hammer+valve games+firefox+windows page file in ram = 2GB by itself). I would imagine XP64 SP3 is pretty stable as far as 64 bit windows releases go, and there are finally stable 64 bit drivers for all my hardware.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[kabloom]

The interesting thing here was that they do install 2 kernels on the desktop, one with PAE and one without. They cripple the PAE-enabled kernel even if you use it on the desktop for stupid reasons.

They *could* have invent real architectural limitation by not installing the PAE kernel at all on desktops (just don't include it on the CD, and force everyone to use a non-PAE enabled kernel), but they don't. Rather, they install it, and then restrict it with a registry key.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Mister Whirly]

I remember back in the day when 8M of RAM was considered too much.

At the risk of showing my age, I remember when memory was still measured in kb and not Mb, and 16k was considered "too much".

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Eirenarch]

Exactly. MS should shove 64 bit down users' throats. Otherwise at some point in the future people will curse 32 bit Windows much the same way they curse IE6 now. After all IE6 was fine when it was release. The problem is users not upgrading an ancient browser. Do we want users not upgrading ancient architecture? Go, Microsoft, go! If I were Microsoft I wouldn't make 32 bit Windows 7 at all.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[petermgreen]

How is XP64 nowadays?
XP64* is really server 2003 minus the server bits and with a different crippling configuration (less CPUs but more ram than server standard), I haven't heard anything bad about it stability wise and when I briefly ran it (on a dell optiplex 755) I didn't have any stability problems.

Afaict quite a bit of hardware comes with 64 bit drivers that will only install on vista and higher. There may be a way to hack these to run on XP64 but YMMV. So if you want to run XP64 you need to be carefull about your hardware purchases.

* P.S. the proper name for the product reffered to here is "windows XP professional x64 edition", this is not the same thing as "windows XP 64 bit edition" (the latter being the edition for the itanium)

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Orion Blastar]

Did you check to see if the Integrated Video Adapter is using System RAM for Video RAM, like 512M of it and then 128M for Caching other stuff? Some times computer makers cheat and use System RAM for video RAM and you cannot get 100% of it.

This is old news by the way.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[jim_v2000]

Why in the world would you use PAE when you can just get a 64 bit OS? I don't think PAE is really being used to differentiate between client and server when both have gone 64 bit.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[jim_v2000]

I don't know about XP 64, but I just got this laptop and it came with Vista 64 bit. Works marvelously (though I can't wait for my Windows 7 disk to get here). Haven't run into a single compatibility issue yet.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[shutdown -p now]

It won't get you to 4Gb anyway. Your video card still has to map its memory somewhere, and you get that much less memory "usable" in a 32-bit Windows version no matter what you do.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[digitalunity]

My laptop came with Vista 64, although I did reinstall and try Vista 32 for a brief period when I had a lot of software compatibility problems.

Here's my Vista 64 nag list:

1. Printer driver support sucks unless you're ready to buy a brand new printer.
2. Many heavily customized WMI installers don't work right. MS anticipated this and tried to add detection and automatic compatibility mode, but that doesn't work generally.
3. Some software will not install on Vista 64, even if it IS compatible because the OS isn't on the installers allowed OS's list. Luckily I have the Windows SDK including Orca to fix that.
4. Browser based ActiveX content breaks OFTEN. This annoys me only because I have to use a website that employs ActiveX heavily for school.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Carrot007]

> power home user

ok.

> windows page file in ram

Er what?

In what way could that make any sense. A page file in ram would have to be limited to the ram size and the ram would provide more performance in being ram. thus to increase performance you would turn off the page file. (and yes this holds true with windows too)

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[digitalunity]

A lot of enterprise customers are still using 32 bit Windows and are weary(rightfully so imo) of driver compatibility issues.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

The "RAM extender for 23 bit Windows" to get over the 4G RAM limit" was written by Microsoft and Intel over 10 years ago, it's called PAE and every version of windows since 2000 uses it, but disables using any memory over 4GB. That's the whole point of the article.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[RightSaidFred99]

lol, yeah.. I don't know what brainiac would come up with the idea of using ram to...allow paging of ram to...ram.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Rewind]

this isn't a technical limitation, this is an imposed limit by Microsoft. They want you to purchase a more expensive version to use more memory.

32 and 64 cost the same, so not sure what you are trying to get at here.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[bhtooefr]

There actually are apps out there that run as kernel mode drivers and access the RAM that is inaccessible to the OS, giving you a RAMdisk. Said RAMdisk can then be used for swap space. Yes, it sounds horribly ridiculous on the surface, but it does work.

Of course, if you want to get more ridiculous... do a RAID setup of some sort that allows you to start on the RAMdisk, then go to HDD when that's full.

Myself, I'll go for a different approach on my machine with both a 32-bit CPU and a chipset that has a hard 3 GiB limitation - I'm going to install an 8 GiB Mini-PCIe SSD, and either run ReadyBoost, or dedicate it to my swap file.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[ImaLamer]

As far as Win7 64, it's pretty solid. I ran both, albeit on different machines, but I noticed no real difference in *stability*. Here are the caveats: not 101% of software is going to run out of the box with a few things maybe not running at all (I've not seen this yet though, but I install little and use it a lot for the same tasks). And some programs are going to be installed in a different directory than the rest of your programs because Windows doesn't like your executables to be in the same directory "tree" as the old nasty 32-bit ones. Oh, and I sometimes get random bluescreens, which is new to *my* Windows experience. The issue seems to be with allocating IRQ's for devices, which makes my eyes sad (what year is this?). I don't know if this is a 64-bit issue or not.

Basically my desktop got Win7 pushed on it when I screwed up my XP partition after it started acting up. When that machine died of hardware failure I built another that topped the 4gig limit. After I built this one I had no choice but to dive into 64-bit Windows - but it's not bad. I guess there are driver issues for older hardware, but some of that could be fixed by the vendors I believe. It's just a matter of hoping they will keep your old hardware current when everyone is pushing, maybe, 8 GB of memory. My point, is that I don't see any difference I guess between the two. I have a friend who can't use his Wi-Fi USB dongle, which he could with 32-bit, so meh.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[rockNme2349]

Duh, everyone knows that for best performance you partition half of your RAM as a RAMDISK and set your pagefile to that drive for optimum performance. RAM is practically meant for a pagefile, its much faster than your hard drive. I can't believe there are people out there who still use hard drives for pagefiles.

Sheesh, I thought this was slashdot.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[LazyBoot]

Aside from obscure legacy needs, I don't see any reason why a new user wouldn't go for the 64-bit versions, and if you have to run obscure legacy hardware or software, then you have to (and always have had to) live with some restrictions cause by that.

Well, on the 64-bit versions of windows you can't use unsigned drivers... Something that is needed to use, for example, the ps3 controller. (And it's only possible to turn this feature off temporarily while booting)

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Bert64]

The market for people who have 64bit systems which can hold far more than 4gb of ram, but for whatever reason want or need to run 32bit versions of windows is much larger...

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[xaxa]

lol, yeah.. I don't know what brainiac would come up with the idea of using ram to...allow paging of ram to...ram.

My university came up with a "compressed swap device" as a group project for hacking the Linux kernel in 2nd year. It was a good exercise, although the end result wasn't especially useful (!).

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm the last time I mentioned not making a x86 windows I got modded down into oblivion, times have changed.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Hadlock]

Yeah, I turned off my page file. Same thing, you explained it better.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[dbIII]

That's not really relevant because as the fine article points out the CPU can handle it in 32 bit mode if you just have software that is not crippled - it maps that elsewhere. I'm not being a fanboy of any sort saying this because Microsoft also have software that can do it.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Hadlock]

So if you want to run XP64 you need to be carefull about your hardware purchases.

Intel processor in an intel (the brand, not just using intel chipset) motherboard; intel has XP64 drivers for download for the network, sound and onboard video, and an Nvidia video card, which has XP64 drivers. Mostly I'm worried about stability and 32 bit application support.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[BikeHelmet]

Errr no, Vista x64 runs with more then 4GB RAM without a problem. Windows 7 32 bit still has same limit. Windows 7 64 bit does not. There is a RAM extender called PAE that is used by all the OSes, Microsoft simply chooses not to install it in their desktop OSes because PAE has been known to break drivers and they want to push 64 bits to desktop. 4GB limit doesn't bother most desktop users and those who have more then 4GB run 64 anyways if they are power users. Yes, I consider 4GB+ users to be power users.

Interesting perception, but incorrect.

Most modern computers - ones shipping with 32bit windows - have PAE enabled because it is required for DEP. The driver argument is hollow, because of that. Clearly there are few enough incompatibilities that PAE/DEP is a good thing when it enhances security, and a bad thing when it deters someone from upgrading their OS. ($$$)

PAE is available in all versions of windows since Windows 2000. It doesn't increase the max available memory in every version - usually only datacenter/enterprise/server versions.

Also, I RTFA. The entire thing. I've also done some research on this in the past. Although I didn't figure out how to beat it for XP, I did bump my available memory up to 3.7GB without PAE. :)

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Barny]

"Obscure legacy needs"

Yeah, like using windows Media Centre, on 64bit windows this is a native 64bit app, meaning it can't use ANY 32bit codecs and filters (xvid, corecodec, haali).

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Nemyst]

Remember that 4GB limit includes *all* RAM, not just actual computer RAM. Video cards are getting absurdly large VRAM nowadays, which further brings the limit down. My already 2-year old 8800GTX has 768mb of RAM; many current GPUs have 1gb of memory, and no, not just enthusiast cards. With all RAM accounted for, I could only see 3gb of system memory overall on XP 32 bits. Considering my mom's 1-year old laptop has 3gb, we're much closer to the breaking point than you seem to think.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Pyrion]

That is assuming the applications are compiled as large address-aware in the first place. If they're not, then they still won't be able to use more than 2GB. All we're talking about here is doubling the limit, but if you're going to exceed 2GB, you're probably going to run into the 4GB barrier eventually anyway.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[complete loony]

Obscure? Legacy? Try any canon printer.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Chaos Incarnate]

If they didn't use PAE, they couldn't use DEP.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

very stable for me, can't say i've had many 32bit programs not work (unless they use a driver)

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[drsmithy]

The key here is that PAE support exists already in 32 bit Windows, but that Microsoft chooses to disable it for consumer operating systems so they can differentiate the consumer and server OS's.

No, they disable it because it breaks a whole bunch of badly written software that they have no control over.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[cbraescu1]

Can't someone just write a RAM extender driver for 32 bit Windows for XP and Vista to get over the 4G RAM limit

Some guy called Linus wrote one...

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[adolf]

Ah for the days of the AST Rampage card that got over the 640M RAM limits using EMM/EMS memory standards.

You know, if I had six hundred and forty megabytes of RAM back in the DOS days...

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[digitalunity]

Exactly. I have a multi-function scan/fax/laser by Canon, it's probably 3 or 4 years old. I just was able to get Vista 64 drivers for it about 2 months ago. I asked Canon and they said(paraphrased) "we're working on it, the drivers are known to be incompatible, sorry."

Compare this to my shiny new Texas Instruments graphing calculator, complete with software disc and USB cable: "Unfortunately the TI84 is incompatible with Vista 64. Future versions of TI-Connect may support your operating system." I let them know that's quite ridiculous given Vista 64 popularity will only continue to rise as XP users abandon their older hardware. I would return the TI84 and go get a Casio Classpad but it's Vista 64 incompatible too!

Vista 64 is nice, but it has it's weak spots.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[adolf]

Apparently, your comment was so sarcastic and dry that even after about four hours, the mods still haven't noticed the humor of it.

Sheesh. I thought this was Slashdot, too.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[digitalunity]

Wrong. PAE is essentially invisible to 99.9% of software, other than drivers that need to support DMA. If you read the article, or knew how modern operating systems use page tables to translate linear addresses into physical addresses, you would realize this already.

Are you just a MS shill? If you're right and PAE is so shitty, why does MS reserve the use of PAE to just the server editions where reliability counts for a lot more than consumer editions?

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[adolf]

I wonder how well your calculator would work with Windows 7's virtualized XP environment, or under Vista with something like VMWare.

I have a similar problem: I have an old Handspring Visor running an old version of PalmOS, and there's no obvious way to make it work under Vista. It works fine using the free VMWare stuff in a virtualized XP, though.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[adolf]

Because servers aren't inundated with vast amounts of shitty software ("software," in this context, to include those programs known as "drivers".)

Nobody gets upset because their vintage Ensoniq AudioPCI sound card or antique Hauppage capture card doesn't work in Server 200x, but everyone pisses and moans when it doesn't work with Vista (hence, all the hating on that particular OS).

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[digitalunity]

Depends on whether Win7's VM for XP virtualizes the USB ports also. The only reason TI-Connect doesn't work with Vista 64 is because of the USB drivers. The program itself works great.

I have used VMWare for running Ubuntu on Vista 64 and it works really great, other than that VMWare doesn't seem to support my USB chipset so Ubuntu can't see any USB devices. If I could get VMWare to virtualize my USB devices, I might consider installing a Vista 32 or XP Pro image to use my calculator.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Tycho]

Yeah, the video card just ends up having its RAM mapped somewhere in the additional seven bits of address space that PAE adds. I suppose you could use the version of the Windows Vista kernel without PAE if you thought it negatively affected performance, but it does not. If you did so you might encounter problems with 2GB of RAM and two 2 GB video cards, but losing the ability to mark pages not executable, the NX flag only is available with PAE on, and even worse, spending that much money to build a stupid system like that would be idiotic.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[pseudonomous]

I wouldn't call the intel atom processor series legacy hardware or obscure.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[drsmithy]

Wrong. PAE is essentially invisible to 99.9% of software, other than drivers that need to support DMA.

Exactly. It breaks a LOT of drivers.

If you read the article, or knew how modern operating systems use page tables to translate linear addresses into physical addresses, you would realize this already.

I know quite well how PAE works, and also why Microsoft no longer supports it in XP. Unlike the people who think it's some big conspiracy.

If you're right and PAE is so shitty, why does MS reserve the use of PAE to just the server editions where reliability counts for a lot more than consumer editions?

Because the hardware drivers for the typical server are _vastly_ higher quality than the drivers for the average piece of crappy consumer level hardware.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[wastedlife]

Sorry, my mind went off to server land for a little while. The more expensive versions (Advanced and Datacenter) of Server 2003 and 2008 32-bit allow you to use more memory. All of Microsoft's 32-bit desktop OSes are stuck with 4 GB.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[wastedlife]

Sorry, I was referring to the more expensive versions of the 32-bit server OSes. I should have specified.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[adolf]

With VMware under Windows, I get a bar at the bottom-right of the VMWare window, with various devices displayed. I can click on the one related to my old Visor, tell it to connect that device to the VM, and the virtualized Windows starts loading drivers for it. I recall it being a non-obvious process until I figured it out.

There's only a few different variations on USB in existence, and they're all about identical once the OS has homogenized them. It seems to me that VMWare should work fine.

Keep trying.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[aztracker1]

The system in question doesn't have onboard video...

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[wastedlife]

AFAIK, PAE is required for DEP, not just for expanded memory. Also, I think PAE on Windows desktops allows to use the full 4 GB of RAM when PCI devices are occupying space in the 3-4 GB address range.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[MBGMorden]

I also wouldn't call 4gb or more of ram on such systems very common, and the newer Atom 230's and 330's support x64 just fine.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[Eirenarch]

Haha someone still modded you down:)

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[smash]

We've been running 64 bit XP with 8gb of RAM for years. If you truly yearn for the days of Conventional memory, XMS, high memory, UMBs, and EMS, I say this: get fucked. :)

It wasn't fun in 1989, and it won't be fun now. Just run a 64 bit OS (your existing license key will probably even allow you to use it on 64 bit media) and move on. You'll get flat memory, double-sized registers and more of them anwyay. >32bit RAM on a 32 bit X86 OS is an ugly hackish waste of time that needs to die.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[smash]

No, it's just not particularly funny...

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[smash]

+1 to this. If users need 32 bit, Vista 32 is available and will run basically anything 7 will. Most people upgrading from XP to 7 will go through major change anyway, in terms of application compatibility and UI diference, etc - so they may as well "break" 32 bit only stuff while they're at it.

I've run 64 bit for 2 1/2 years now (Vista, prior to upgrading to 7) and really there's not a lot of stuff that doesn't work.

I really think 32 bit Win7 is a waste of time. Apart from maybe intel atom support...

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[smash]

So, no great losses then? Some craptiveX shit breaks, old printers due for the bin need to be replaced (justification to management = easy) and some brain damaged software needs to be updated.

(i've run 64 bit for a few years now - yes there are a few problems but they're short term pain :))

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[smash]

Pretty sure you can on 7 at least. I recently bought a cheap shitty Wireless N card from China (TP-LINK) and it works with 64 bit 7 RTM just fine. It flashed up a red warning about being unsigned or "unable to validate" on install, but its working fine.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[smash]

other than drivers that need to support DMA

You mean... like basically any non-trivial hardware driver?

PAE is AVAILABLE on server editions because they're not installed by millions of home users who are going to just call and bitch without RTFM-ing. PAE on a server is still not a good idea, if you are at all able to shift to 64 bit.

The driver problems with PAE are non-existent if the driver is PAE capable. Most consumer home user made-in-china shit-ware is not.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[smash]

Besides, this isn't a technical limitation, this is an imposed limit by Microsoft. They want you to purchase a more expensive version to use more memory

32 and 64 bit versions of Windows are the same price. The same license key even works. If you purchased 32 bit and want to run 64 bit, the media is available for basically the cost of shipping. Otherwise, you can source media elsewhere and use your existing key on that computer.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[PRMan]

Easy, I do this at work to get access to all 4GB of RAM on a Dell system that won't do it any other way.

1. Look for and download the Chinese version of Gavrotte RAMDisk. This version has the ability to make RAMDisks out of RAM that can't be seen by Windows XP 32 any other way.

2. Now, you have a 1GB RAMDisk R:, made entirely out of RAM that you would otherwise never be able to see. Turn off your swapfile on C: and make a 1GB swapfile on R:.

Bingo. You now have access to all 4GB of RAM on Windows XP 32, no matter what whiny chipset you are using.

Makes sense to me.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[PRMan]

Somebody with a RAMDisk driver (Gavrotte RAMDisk) that can build ram disks out of the memory that Windows XP 32 can't otherwise see.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[PRMan]

Many heavily customized WMI installers don't work right. MS anticipated this and tried to add detection and automatic compatibility mode, but that doesn't work generally.

And people wonder why I have never switched from Inno Setup.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[LazyBoot]

Last time I tried, I had to choose "disable driver signature enforcement" from the advanced boot menu, every time I booted, or none of my usb-ports would work (because I had to install libusbwin). This was using the 7000 beta build, Though.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[kabloom]

To save some Googling, DEP=Data Execuation Prevention.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[twoHats]

Try 64K! The first Mac had 64K in a sealed box that had to be cut open to add another 64K... 640K was the DOS limit, and the whole reason for Intel's EMS.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[adolf]

They usually aren't.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[EvilJoker]

There is a limitation you should be aware of- any shell extensions must be written for x64. For instance, when you right click on a .RAR file, and you have the options to Extract to Subfolder (thanks to WinRAR). I still cannot simply create .PAR2 files from the shell. I have to open QuickPAR, then go through the process that way.

Also, CloneCD does not work (at least, not the old version I tried to install) since it wants to use its own ASPI driver. Had to update Daemon Tools for the same reason.

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[hrimhari]

Damn... And I thought that only on-board video had to steal from the RAM...

Well, good thing I haven't bought any video cards since my old Diamond with VESA bus!

Re:Nobody needs more than 640K of RAM

[alexandre_ganso]

This looks like ancient policy. Like when they didn't have a 64-bit version of windows. They surely charge way more for the server edition, because a windows 2000 with 16gb ram and apache would be a deal killer to them...

Use bank switching...

[theaveng]

That's how my Commodore=128 got around the 64k limitation of its CPU, and could access upto 16 banks or 1 megabyte of RAM.

If the same technology was used with 32 banks of Windows XP space, you could get 128 gigabytes.

Re:Use bank switching...

[TheRealMindChild]

You CAN turn on PAE if your hardware platform supports it (most modern ones do). However, this tends to break Desktop 32bit windows, because the driver producers make stupid assumptions like its driver will always be loaded in the 3GB->4GB address space.

Aside from that, paging will only give you 4GB of contiguous memory. That kind of kills most practical uses for this kind of memory (aside from running many apps).

Re:Use bank switching...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I tried PAE. The result was a slow, buggy OS. I turned if off again. It's much happier now.

Re:Use bank switching...

[tepples]

Aside from that, paging will only give you 4GB of contiguous memory. That kind of kills most practical uses for this kind of memory (aside from running many apps).

If you have many cores and don't want them to be idle, you need to run many apps. The multi-thread programming model doesn't scale nearly as well as multi-process does.

Re:Use bank switching...

[Ardaen]

Did you read the article? (No, you didn't) It points out most modern Windows systems automatically use PAE because Microsoft has turned on DEP by default where supported. It appears 32bit desktop Windows has a limitation imposed by the licensing code since around XP SP2, not some option you can disable. It also points out most applications don't use anywhere near 4GB of memory (yet at least) and the primary practical use of that much RAM these days IS multiple applications.

Re:Use bank switching...

[TheRealMindChild]

Easy there tiger.

It appears 32bit desktop Windows has a limitation imposed by the licensing code since around XP SP2, not some option you can disable

Then I wonder what the /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYS(ON|OFF) and /(NO)PAE switches are for...

It also points out most applications don't use anywhere near 4GB of memory (yet at least) and the primary practical use of that much RAM these days IS multiple applications.

My comment had nothing directly to do with the article, but everything to do with the post I was replying to. They commented, in a nutshell, enabling "bank switching" is the solution to all of the 32bit memory limitation problems. It isn't. For the very reason I stated...

Re:Use bank switching...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you needed to process data in one bank and store the result in another one, which would be very common, the process would become slow as molasses because it would require a very high number of context switches. Memory banks are a thing of the past (DOS) that should never be used today unless when absolutely necessary.

Re:Use bank switching...

[Ardaen]

Then I wonder what the /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYS(ON|OFF) and /(NO)PAE switches are for...

Those switches are valid and work, however they don't allow you to use memory above the license limit. The kernel just refuses to use more than the memory limit. With a desktop license the PAE kernel detects all your RAM and is able to address it properly, however during startup it discards all memory above the limit read from the license data. The server editions of windows use the same kernel executables but don't have the licensing limit. Read the article for a clearer more detailed explanation.

They commented, in a nutshell, enabling "bank switching" is the solution to all of the 32bit memory limitation problems. It isn't. For the very reason I stated...

This is also addressed in the article. A single process can only address 4GB of memory. In Windows the upper 1-2GB are reserved for system use leaving 2-3GB for user space depending on your boot flags. However generally in modern use, the memory limitation you are likely to encounter is the overall system limit, not the individual application limit.

Sorry if I come across as overly aggressive with my response, but please read the article before making comments based on assumptions that mislead and misrepresent the topic of said article. I'm tired of people making FUD easier by never bothering to read the topic.

Re:Use bank switching...

[commodore64_love]

>>> you could get 128 gigabytes.

Close. An Intel 32-bit CPU can actually address 64 gigabytes, so it appears Intel is using 16 banks, same as your C=128 did.

Simple

[TheRealMindChild]

Does Microsoft really mean to say that when it re-badges these same executables as Windows Vista SP1, they suddenly acquire an architectural limit of 4GB? Or is it that a driver for Windows Server 2008 is safe for using with memory above 4GB as long as you don't let it interact with the identical executables from Windows Vista SP1?

Windows Server 2008 drivers have to be signed. For them to get signed, they can't do stupid shit like assume they are loaded in the memory space between 3GB->4GB, I'd imagine.

Re:Simple

[fluch]

...they can't do stupid shit like assume they are loaded in the memory space between 3GB->4GB, I'd imagine.

You must be new here...

Re:Simple

[DaHat]

Half true... x64 versions of Windows require signed drivers... however you are not required to have your drivers signed when running an x86 build of 2008.

Re:Simple

[poetmatt]

you can enable unsigned drivers in xp/vista/7 many different ways and is relevant for such things as graphics card drivers, etc.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the linked tools is solid/satisfactory/reliable/trustworthy.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Signing has nothing to do with quality. All it means is that someone signed it with a tool like signcode.

Re:Simple

[TheRealMindChild]

For it to be signed by MS, it has to pass the Windows Logo Program

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

typing bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS into the command line is unreliable/untrustworthy? maybe you should read the stuff I linked. oh right, Anon coward.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

So we have to pay for the mistakes of the people who made those dumbass assumptions? And MS was kind enough to take that burden on its own shoulders instead of delegating it to the hardware manufacturers? Thanks for bailing out those morons MS! Hi Creative!

Re:Simple

[Anpheus]

It does if the drivers have to pass a standardized method of certification and testing on both 32 and 64-bit kernels.

Food for thought:

Before Vista was released, 64-bit drivers were hard to find for Windows. They were frequently buggy, rarely supported every feature, and as a result, Windows XP 64-bit is barely acknowledges as a legitimate OS release, and has received little fanfare. With Vista, and the introduction of 64-bit as a consumer OS feature widely available, and closer alignment to the server platform that would soon (2008 R2) become 64-bit only, this has changed. Why? Not because of anything I said, actually. It's because WHQL and Windows Logo certification didn't necessarily require 64-bit drivers to be released. When Vista was under development, it was decided the only thing that would drag the hardware vendors into the 21st century was to require 64-bit drivers under a number of categories (I'm unfamiliar if there are exceptions for certification.) This means that, for example, every shipping driver in Windows Vista that received WHQL certification has a 32 and a 64 bit version.

This requirement from Microsoft killed Vista's reputation, as we all know. Why is Windows 7 being reviewed so much better? In many ways, it's a similar OS, with a similar kernel. There are performance improvements, some very nice new features, etc. I could talk about those at length. But the reason it's getting fantastic reviews is that since three years ago, anyone who was anyone who wanted to release hardware that worked with Windows and get it certified had to make sure a 32-bit and a 64-bit driver was released.

I only mention all of this because this is one of the primary reason why certain things are supported on certain SKUs of Windows. I outlined differences between Windows XP and Windows Vista in terms of driver certification, but that's just the beginning. For the most part, consumer drivers should work with PAE, but may not, and as far as I know, this is an issue with the requirements Microsoft laid out. For consumer OSes and server OSes, it was decided that the driver requirements differed and support for certain features was an unnecessary burden on hardware manufacturers. It is those logo requirements that drive many vendors to add features.

You'd be surprised by the list of logo requirements and how they benefit end users. For example, Windows Vista logo testing required cameras to support Media Transfer Protocol, for speeding file transfer. It requires printers to support the Windows Color System, for accurate color space representation. It requires DVI connectors on logo bearing monitors. It requires QoS and topology discovery in routers, switches, and network hardware that is logo tested. These are all things that have real benefits, no? Companies are not required to get logo testing, but it's a win for consumers, even those who never use Microsoft's OS.

So yes, signing does have a thing or two to do with quality, if the right agency is doing the signing and certification.

No, I don't work for Microsoft, I just despise the people who think that every corporation can do no good. Does it right Microsoft's wrongs? No. Don't pretend I think it does!

Re:Simple

[blackraven14250]

Yeah, because Microsoft is going to tell you how to do it.

Re:Simple

[GigaplexNZ]

And none of those are 64bit versions of Server 2008, so aren't relevant to the parents comment.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

With windows logo you mean that appleish aqua bubble with the xp logo inside apple joked about?

Snow Leopard will be available in three days

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a Mac, leave Microsoft and all their stupid crap behind. It's just not worth it.

Re:Snow Leopard will be available in three days

[Your Anus]

Or, you could install Linux or FreeBSD on a PC.

Re:Snow Leopard will be available in three days

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds great, I can't wait until I can play all my favorite games on Snow Leopard. Lord of the Rings Online, Left 4 Dead, Section 8, and I'm excited that Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is going to work flawlessly.

What's that you say? Macs are only for people worried about productivity or pretentiousness? Because THAT is what I want to do with my free time; work all day, come home for my free time, then I get to... work all fucking night OR be an egotistical fucktard! Sign. Me. Up.

You're not just a toolbag, you're the entire fucking shed.

Re:Snow Leopard will be available in three days

[ImaLamer]

This gets +3 LAWL

Re:Snow Leopard will be available in three days

[Anonymous Coward]

No one uses their PC for games. Get real.

Re:Snow Leopard will be available in three days

[Jesus_666]

I managed to completely leave Microsoft behind by selling my PC and buying a Mac and an XBox 360--

D'oh!

windows 4gb memory limit

[Anonymous Coward]

My Linux boxes never have these issues. hmmm.

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[micheas]

The last time I compiled linux for x386 I was given the option of supporting more than 4 gig of ram with a warning not to do it unless you needed to because of the performance penalty.

It seems like the cost effective thing to do in the vast majority of cases with x386 is to get multiple boxes with 4 gig of ram. The exception seems to be some database servers with a particular load pattern.

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[Anonymous Coward]

your mom's box doesn't have those issues, either. Just last night, she took 7 uncut black cocks.

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[Fulcrum of Evil]

It seems like the cost effective thing to do in the vast majority of cases with x386 is to get multiple boxes with 4 gig of ram.

Nah, just build 64 bit boxes with however much ram you can get that is under the current price knee. 4G looks affordable, so 16 or 32G should be fine.

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[kabloom]

I recently did configuration work on linux boxes that had 4 GB in RAM in them, but couldn't see more than 1GB of it because the previous administrator had neglected to enable CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G in the kernel configuration.

And to see more than 4GB of RAM on a Debian box, you need to use a special -bigmem kernel that has CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G enabled, because handling physical memory addresses more than 32-bits wide slows everything down, so Debian opted not to enable CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G by default.

So your Linux boxes *could* have these issues, and you do need to worry about it.

(Get a 64-bit kernel on a 64-bit processor and you're fine, though.)

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[techno-vampire]

I recently bought a new laptop and put Fedora 11 on it. I'd picked one with 3 Gig of RAM installed to avoid potential problems with a 64 bit system and was a tad surprised to see that Fedora installed a PAE kernel by default. Recently, I showed it to some friends of mine (You can't really describe the multiple desktops and rotating cube to people; it's much better to show them.) He put this on his blog: "I have also been impressed with the performance of the latest Red Hat with Gnome as I saw it on a friend's fairly standard laptop; indeed, it was in many ways indistinguishable in operation from Windows XP, but was fast and crisp." [Actually, he used my name; I changed it here for obvious reasons.] There are two important points here: first, he didn't see a performance penalty from the PAE kernel and second, it implies either that XP is neither fast nor crisp, or if it is, Linux is faster and crisper. Of course, that might be because the PAE isn't really needed. I don't know; I don't do Windows.

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[PitaBred]

I ran 6GB with Linux on a 32bit Xeon system with PAE for a while. It worked alright, just a little slowdown. Felt maybe like a couple hundred MHz drop in CPU clocks.

The cost effective thing to do in the vast majority of cases is to upgrade to 64bit. Multiple 32bit machines will eat a lot more power.

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[ImaLamer]

I totally read that as Linux "bosses".

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[jlarocco]

The cost effective thing to do when running Linux is to buy a machine with a 64-bit processor, as much memory as you need and not worry about it.

I've been running 64-bit Debian for years now, using all 8 GB of my ram, and except for the increased speed of running in 64-bit mode, it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between 64-bit and 32-bit Linux installations. Hell, I can even use Wine to run 32-bit Windows apps.

The tards in Windows land are the only people getting all butt-hurt about 64-bit any more. Everybody else seems to have figured it out by now.

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[glitch23]

Funny you say that because I *do* have the problem with my MacBook. I got it in October of 2007. I recently (few weeks ago) bought 4 GB of RAM because I had to order a new hard drive so I figured I'd upgrade the 1GB of RAM at the same time. I installed everything but only 3GB of RAM was being used even though the system profiler utility said there was 4GB installed. I did some research and it turns out that pre-November 2007 MacBooks (I think this was also mentioned on the MacBook wikipedia page) artificially limit users to 3GB. It seems to not only be an issue with the firmware but elsewhere as well (although I forget the other area that enforces the limit) so both areas would have to be modified to allow 4GB to be used. Note that newer MacBooks are not affected.

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[yuhong]

"I'd picked one with 3 Gig of RAM installed to avoid potential problems with a 64 bit system and was a tad surprised to see that Fedora installed a PAE kernel by default." Most likely due to NX requiring PAE. Fedora 11 does detection of PAE and NX in the installer and select the right kernel. "Of course, that might be because the PAE isn't really needed. I don't know; I don't do Windows." Windows XP SP2 and later does the same PAE/NX detection and kernel selection in the bootloader, so XP SP2 and later would have booted up the PAE kernel as well (granted, limited to 4 GB of physical address space unlike Linux) to use the NX bit.

Re:windows 4gb memory limit

[yuhong]

It seems to not only be an issue with the firmware but elsewhere as well (although I forget the other area that enforces the limit) so both areas would have to be modified to allow 4GB to be used.

Most likely, it is the memory controller inside the northbridge. The 945 and older northbridges have support for only 32 address lines, and so no it is not an artificial limit.

Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

On a 32-bit system a single process will always be limited to 4 GB due to the number of address bits, unless the programmer goes through hoops to access a larger memory area one small piece at a time (tricks like that were common in the DOS era -- anyone remember EMS?). On Windows the kernel typically reserves one half of the address space, cutting the usable memory of a single process down to 2 GB. Thus you won't get much advantage from a 64 GB capable kernel unless you run multiple programs that all require 1-2 GB of memory. Come to think of it, such usage is most likely on a server.

Re:Word for the wise

[Psyborgue]

Photoshop will eat up memory by the gigabyte as will 3d sculpting apps and reyes type renderers. Video editing in HD almost always requires a large amount of ram for ram previews and smooth scrubbing among other things.

Re:Word for the wise

[Chris Burke]

Then get a 64-bit OS and be happy.

PAE is a hack. Even if your copy of windows supports it, it still sucks. It doesn't actually grant the ability to access all 64GB at the same time, it only lets you access it in 4GB windows, so your app has to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to actually use that memory. It was a decent solution for having large databases in the 32-bit era, and that was rightly the only place it should be used. Today, 64 bit cpus are completely mainstream and vastly superior for handling large amounts of data.

Frankly, in the era of 64-bit budget computers, I think calling the 4GB limit "architectural" is as fair as saying the 286 had a 1MB limit after the introduction of the 386. Technically not completely accurate, but for most nearly all practical purposes it drives the listener in the right direction, which is getting the product which doesn't have the restriction in any way.

Re:Word for the wise

[arjennienhuis]

Even if you would run only one process, you can still use thee extra usable RAM for the disk cache.

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

That is only partially true. Sometimes you are limited by that 1 gig of memory you have in your video card and where it is mapped into memory by the PCI bus.

Dense reading but worth it if you want to understand how windows memory works.

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2009/03/26/3211216.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2009/07/08/3261309.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspx

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

While not all software needs it, being able to store data in RAM rather than pull it off the hard drive can be very useful. I use my PCs to run software synths, and the hard drive is simply incapable of dealing with the amount of data being streamed constantly. The programs load all the samples straight into RAM. I very commonly have multiple processes running, each using up to a GB or more of RAM. Although it would be nice if a single process could access more than 2 GB, being able to have multiple processes each accessing up to 2GB of RAM would be awesome.

The RAM limit is a major driving force in trying to push audio software over to 64bit... in fact Microsoft has teamed up with Cakewalk and their program Sonar to promote its 64bit version.

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

*cough*My newly unboxed version of ddo:stormreach (A game that is over 9000 years old)*cough* on the best settings consumes about 1.2Gb of ram. Just adding something to the list.

Re:Word for the wise

[tagno25]

But if you are not going to run multiple instances of those programs, then it can only address 4GB as a maximum

Re:Word for the wise

[Sandbags]

Yea, but even if you enable 16GB of RAM under 32bit Windows, XP and Vista can only give 2GB of it to photoshop, MAX. No SINGLE application can utilize more than 4GB of virtual address space under PAE, had half the address space is reserved for the lernel. PAE however is disabl;ed under 32bit OS as it has risks, especially for lots of drivers, and letting general users have access to this, without a process for validating and supporting all their apps under it (which most companies do not have programmers who understand this type of addressing), would be a support nightmare. PAE works when lots of individual apps need to run concurrently, or when multiple instances of the same app need to run under seperated memory spaces. Both these cases are uncommon for workstation users, and the 64 bit edition solves this issue for most users who would take advantage of it, so PAE is not included in workstation OS by Microsoft. This is NOT a licencing issue, or even a "charge more for advanced features" issue, it;s about who needs it, how much it costs to support it, and whether or not the SHOULD be using it vs other options...

Its possible for an application under 32bit windows to also take advantage of AWE (Address Windowing Extension). This requires the lock Pages in Memory privilidge for the app, and some pretty extensive code level support. This can allow a 32 bit app to use more than 4GB of RAM under 32bit. It is not very efficient. It;s also one of the API's you're paying extra for under the server licnece that you do not get under the workstation license (XP can't do this, Server 2003 can). Typically this is reserved for apps with massive datasets (DBs over 2GB, large video files, massive images, etc) in situations where the code can not be easily ported to 64bit but where support for AWE can be added.

Re:Word for the wise

[Tawnos]

This is at least partially, but likely wholly, incorrect. This provides a very good analysis of the issue. Essentially, you can address 2GB at any given time, but you can allocate as much contiguous space as the OS is able to pull up in its virtual address space. This means you can allocated, and address, 5 gigs of memory if you desire, but you would have to be careful and work with a view window of only 2GB. Nothing in that means you are limited to addressing only 4GB (32 bit pointer limit) of memory, simply that you can only address so much at a given time.
There is no need to run multiple instance of a program in order to read and write/address more than the 2 gig system limit.

Re:Word for the wise

[sarkeizen]

I'd agree that there's a lot of contextual information when interpreting sentences and "there is a 4GB architectural limit" is no exception but what does "for nearly all practical purposes" mean then? I mean if we really are "in the era of 64-bit budget computers" doesn't that imply that people who are using more memory than 4GB are likely at the lower end (i.e. >4GB

To me anyway MS can license their OS any way they want (memory, CPUs, number of keys on your keyboard) however we probably would have held off on upgrading a number of machines if we simply could have upgraded their memory.

Re:Word for the wise

[geekoid]

PAE is fine. It's well implemented, and the speed differences compared to 64bit it hardle measurable.

Why go buy another OS when you don't have to?

That said, I wish they would stop selling 32bit desktop OS's.

Re:Word for the wise

[Chris Burke]

PAE is fine. It's well implemented, and the speed differences compared to 64bit it hardle measurable.

Well implemented? What, you mean in hardware? Yeah, it's a four entry table containing page table entries. From a hardware standpoint it's faster than 64-bit because reading the "fourth level" page table doesn't require a memory access.

From a software standpoint, the implementation of the feature doesn't matter because the feature is, by today's standards, crap. Dealing with 4GB windows of virtual memory, where anything shared must be mapped in each virtual address space and you can't just keep around pointers to the "other" windows, is a pain in the ass and hinders software at an architectural level.

There's a reason no database or cpu vendor is using PAE for benchmarks even when the database size is less than 64GB. It's because it was a hack, passable for its day but pointless now. 64-bit obviates the hack. You should get a new OS because its much better.

Re:Word for the wise

[GreatBunzinni]

In windows world don't your applications need to be compiled to the 64-bit windows platform in order to work? If so, getting a x86-64 windows release is not an option, as some of the people who need to access that much memory are using professional applications that cost way too much to just dump and re-buy.

Re:Word for the wise

[Chris Burke]

* four bit, sixteen entry table...

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

The 286 had a 16 MB memory limit. It used 24 bit addressing. The 8088, 8086, and 80186 used 20 bit addressing. You did have to use an awful 16-bit protected mode that was heavily redesigned with the 80386 and therefore little known.

Re:Word for the wise

[Chris Burke]

32 bit applications will run in 64 bit windows. They do need to be compiled as 64-bit applications if you want to take advantage of having the larger virtual memory space. If the "professional application that costs way too much to just dump and re-buy" is also the one which requires more than 4GB of RAM -- well, the whole app would have to have been programmed around PAE anyway, and if that's the case then you probably would have bought the appropriate version of Windows in the first place (or could save a lot of money by doing so).

Most professional applications with large memory requirements should have 64-bit versions out already (this is more likely than them supporting PAE), and hopefully your support contract includes upgrades so at the next cycle you can get the 64-bit version.

Re:Word for the wise

[Chris Burke]

Ha! Yeah I'd forgotten about 286 protected mode and its 20 bit addressing. I even have a book that covers it -- but since at the time the 386 was already out, and its actually good protected modes were also covered by the book, I couldn't imagine anything more useless than the 286 protected mode. :)

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft was wise to just end this argument server side and drop completely a 32 bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2. If I were to guess why Microsoft was continuing a 32 bit version of their client OS, I'd probably say it is due to netbooks and the small memory footprint (1-2GB) they have.

Re:Word for the wise

[daVinci1980]

What you're talking about is not particularly a good idea though, and would be done only by specific programs where they know that they need to have very large (> 2GB) data sets available, in memory, all at once, and that they are to be deployed on 32-bit systems--and was written entirely by masochists.

In order to take advantage of this functionality, the application would need to manage its own page table. Or instead of doing so, they could continue to allow the OS to manage it for them by either:

1) Targeting a 64-bit platform (easiest)
2) Providing a multi-process solution where each process provides access to no more than 2 Gb each, and then use a handle-based approach to access data in other processes.

Either of these solutions is both easier to implement (the first case in fact is trivial, but reduces your potential market footprint) than managing your own page table with the OS--which is error prone. Oh, and note that the second solution will take advantage of something else you're likely trying to do: scale versus the number of cores.

Re:Word for the wise

[Chris Burke]

but what does "for nearly all practical purposes" mean then?

It means "practically speaking, if you need more than 4GB of RAM get a 64 bit cpu/OS and you'll be much better off."

I mean if we really are "in the era of 64-bit budget computers" doesn't that imply that people who are using more memory than 4GB are likely at the lower end

Yes absolutely. But so what? If you want to use more than 4GB in a single application, 64-bit is the way to go even if you're really only using 33 bits. Hell most CPUs don't even implement all 64 address bits, just 40 or 48, because that's still a lot of frickin' memory. But if that changes, newer cpus can just support more bits without having to change the ISA or recompile programs. And it'll be a long time before 64-bits is insufficient. :)

Re:Word for the wise

[Pharmboy]

Windows 64 bit runs either 32 or 64 bit apps pretty seemlessly. The big disadvantage of being 64 bit is that Microsoft has dropped all 16 bit support in their 64 bit operating systems. For 99.5% of people, this is fine.

The other .5% are like me and still have some 16 bit software they are really old games from the Win 3.1 days I still love (sim tower and others), or old utilities from mid 90s that haven't been replaced simply because I am used to them and they work.

For these, virtualPC is the only option to run them. It is a reasonable tradeoff to get 64 bit performance. Of course, it would be more reasonable if you could install VirtualPC on Vista Home Premium, as I have two laptops that run it (bought them used) and there is no technical reason they can't, except MS doesn't want them to.

As for "big apps" that use lots of memory and you don't want to replace: either they use more than 4gb and are already 64 bit or they use less than 4gb and will run fine on a 64 bit platform. Even on Linux 64bit, I don't have any problem getting 32 bit programs to run fine. On both platforms, the key is having 64 bit DRIVERS.

Re:Word for the wise

[glennpratt]

And how many of those machines physically supported more the 4GB of memory? That came out before XP x64 was released?

Re:Word for the wise

[jim_v2000]

No, it's like having the 32 bit libs installed in 64 bit Linux. 32 bit apps work just fine in 64 bit Windows. I've been using 64 bit Vista for a few weeks now and I haven't had trouble installing anything. The main difference, really, is that 64 bit apps get installed in C:/Program Files and 32 bit apps get installed in C:/Progam Files (x86).

Re:Word for the wise

[sarkeizen]

It means "practically speaking, if you need more than 4GB of RAM get a 64 bit cpu/OS and you'll be much better off."

However only if that's the general use case. Otherwise the term 'practical' doesn't seem to apply.

Yes absolutely. But so what?

(I think I accidentally chopped some of my response - bad tag maybe!) Pretty much what I say above. That you're assuming that > 4GB in a single application is the general use case of having from 4 to 8 GB. For the low end I rather suspect that it's not.

Re:Word for the wise

[sarkeizen]

Of the ones I was talking about? They all either supported > 4GB or supported 4GB but could only utilize 3GB.

Re:Word for the wise

[GreatBunzinni]

You are making your assumptions on the base that just because you bought a 32-bit version of an application you will automatically receive the 64-bit version of it, free of charge. That is not the case, as even Microsoft doesn't just give their 64-bit OS to those who bought the 32-bit one. To their eyes it's a completely separate product which the customer must pay in order to access. So if Microsoft doesn't do it then why would companies such as autodesk, adobe or some other big name do the same with their products?

Re:Word for the wise

[w0lo]

3GB is max, not 2GB (You must turn this setting on, and only apps that have a flag set in their header will actually get it)

Re:Word for the wise

[Pentium100]

Yea, but even if you enable 16GB of RAM under 32bit Windows, XP and Vista can only give 2GB of it to photoshop, MAX.

But it would allow me to play new games without having to close Firefox and Opera to free ~1GB of RAM. I could add more RAM if needed and would not have to reinstall Windows either 64bit or the Server version.

Re:Word for the wise

[glennpratt]

And they came out before XP x64 was released?

Because if they didn't, what profit motive would Microsoft have to support this conspiracy?

Do you think Microsoft should have supported PAE on the desktop, hardware manufacturers should have released PAE compatible drivers and software developers should have made PAE aware apps so you could use >3.25GB on 32bit Windows? Sounds like effort that was rightly directed at x64.

Personally, 64 bit on the desktop couldn't have come soon enough. I wouldn't have wanted MS to waste time on PAE. I started using XP x64 as soon as it came out and I'm running Vista x64 now (also Ubuntu AMD64 and OS X). I had to deal with PAE on DB servers, I don't want to think about it on my desktop

Re:Word for the wise

[Chris Burke]

However only if that's the general use case. Otherwise the term 'practical' doesn't seem to apply.

I don't understand what you're getting at. We were talking about the alleged "architectural limitation" of 32-bit microprocessors to access up to 4GB of memory. Either you're using that much memory or not, and thus are either happy with a 32-bit OS or should upgrade to a 64-bit OS. "In all practical cases", treating the 4GB limit like its architectural results in the optimal decision.

(I think I accidentally chopped some of my response - bad tag maybe!) Pretty much what I say above. That you're assuming that > 4GB in a single application is the general use case of having from 4 to 8 GB. For the low end I rather suspect that it's not.

Oh, I see. You're hypothesizing 4 apps that use at most 1.5GB each just as a random example, so there all they really need is the ability to access more than 4GB of physical RAM but have no need of the larger virtual space. Personally even in the "low end" case I suspect that is unlikely. I think it is much more likely that the average user has a number of apps that use a modest amount of memory (100s of MB, games and web browsers), and then one or two apps which will happily chew up as much memory as they have (photoshop, 3dsmax, any other media/content application).

In any case, if their usage ever changes such that an app would like to use all of their RAM (and I do find it hard to imagine apps that use over 1GB but could never make use of more are common), then they will need a 64-bit OS or apps coded for PAE. To make the most flexible use of their RAM, they need a 64-bit OS. To me, "practical" also means "not unnecessarily restricted" because otherwise your "practical" solution is just waiting to become impractical when the limitation bites you in the ass.

Basically, if you have more than 4GB of RAM in your system, a 64-bit OS is imminently more practical than the other option.

Re:Word for the wise

[hurfy]

Ah i remember using a bunch of memory on my 286 for task-switching so you could pretend to run more than one program at once. Combined with dual monitors it was pretty sweet for editing documents at the time. I could push an original to the 2nd monitor and leave it up as I edit on the other :)

Unfortunately, i kept pushing the poor thing til it died....2 monitors, 2 HD, 2 floppies and almost 2 M of ram i think. Just don't try to pick the darned thing up :)

Of course much like the stuff they are talking about for Windows it wasn't the best idea for office use and most of what i did to it was done after 386's came out anyways. Everything after the memory expansion cards to get that 1st MB on old computers was pretty useless and even that relied on 3rd party stuff til DOS caught up.

Re:Word for the wise

[c6gunner]

The other .5% are like me and still have some 16 bit software they are really old games from the Win 3.1 days I still love (sim tower and others), or old utilities from mid 90s that haven't been replaced simply because I am used to them and they work. For these, virtualPC is the only option to run them.

DosBox does the job just fine.

Of course, it would be more reasonable if you could install VirtualPC on Vista Home Premium, as I have two laptops that run it (bought them used) and there is no technical reason they can't, except MS doesn't want them to.

If you're really wedded to the idea of using a fancy-shmancy emulator, go download Suns VirtualBox. It'll install on your "home premium" without problems, and I find it to be a far superior product. Plus the "free" thing is kinda nice.

Re:Word for the wise

[Pharmboy]

The apps I am talking about are Windows 16 bit, not DOS. The virtualbox tip looks very interesting, and I will check into that for the laptops.

As a side note to those not familiar, VirtualPC is free "as in beer", but not "as in speech", *if* you are running the biz or ultimate version of windows.

Re:Word for the wise

[Pharmboy]

You are making your assumptions on the base that just because you bought a 32-bit version of an application you will automatically receive the 64-bit version of it, free of charge.

I am not assuming anything. The vast majority of the apps I am running on my 64 bit version of Vista are 32 bit, NOT 64. I only have a few actual 64 bit programs (Half-Life 2, for instance). It seems you are assuming that you can't run 32 bit apps on a 64 bit platform. You can, and it is fully supported. Drivers, however, must be 64 bit.

That is not the case, as even Microsoft doesn't just give their 64-bit OS to those who bought the 32-bit one.

Yes they do. Go buy a new version of Windows, both versions are included on the disks. And Microsoft doesn't charge more for the 64 bit version of their operating system when you buy a new system either.

Go buy any computer with 4gb of RAM or more and it automatically comes with the 64 bit version, you don't get a choice. Other than a netbook or stripped down "email only" machine, I can't see why anyone would buy a new computer with less than 4gb, considering the price of RAM. Maybe a few years ago, because 64 bit driver support was lacking, but that isn't the case now.

Re:Word for the wise

[hey]

That almost explains why Adobe Premiere says its "low in memory" when its only at 1G on my 4G box according to task manager.

Only 3.41G (of the 4G) can be used. Windows takes half (1.7G) leaving Premiere and the other apps do duke it out for the remaining 1.7G.

Re:Word for the wise

[dbIII]

Yes, but more than ten years ago Intel released the Pentium Pro that got around this problem and Microsoft wrote support for that into NT. Everyone else since on x86 supports addressing more than 4GB. The crippled home versions of MS software do not support it (and unfortunately they called some of their home versions "Pro" and similar to confuse people). You can run Win2k on more than 4GB but not 32 bit Vista "Ultimate".

Re:Word for the wise

[BikeHelmet]

Then get a 64-bit OS and be happy.

I agree.

PAE is a hack.

I disagree. Paging is fundamental to memory management. You like having memory mapped to 4KB pages, but call it a hack when those 4KB pages are mapped to different physical memory locations? Why?

Apparently PAE is even more efficient than 64bit addressing. It's the faster option, although you're 100% correct about the per-process limit being roughly 3GB, which means it'll be obsolete shortly. Games, video editing, and virtual machines will be first to benefit from 64bit > 4GB memory usage.

What I've always wondered is why Windows uses 4KB pages. Larger pages are far more efficient. The guy who made 7-zip tried hacking in multi-megabyte pages, and had a 15% speedup. O_o

Re:Word for the wise

[fm6]

The big disadvantage of being 64 bit is that Microsoft has dropped all 16 bit support in their 64 bit operating systems. For 99.5% of people, this is fine.

No, the big disadvantage of Win64 is astonishingly bad driver support. I've seen systems that couldn't handle USB mice!

And even at 0.5%, you're grossly overestimating the people who need to run 16-bit apps. Any Win16 app is at least a decade old and is no longer supported by the company that published it — assuming they still exist! If you have mission critical processes relying on such software, you're insane.

Of course, games don't count as "mission critical" — except on Slashdot, of course.

Re:Word for the wise

[UnknownSoldier]

> That said, I wish they would stop selling 32bit desktop OS's.

Seconded, but (crappy*) netbooks are one of the reasons they can't.

* Disclaimer: i love my acer aspire one for basic web surfing and development on the go

Re:Word for the wise

[c6gunner]

The apps I am talking about are Windows 16 bit, not DOS.

I haven't actually tried it, but if it's not possible to run Win 3.1 under DosBox, I'll eat my hat. It'll even run XTreeGold :)

The virtualbox tip looks very interesting, and I will check into that for the laptops.

Glad I could help. Best thing about VirtualBox (aside from being free and fast and awesome) is that it's open source and therefore available for a number of platforms. I have several virtual machine images stored on my OpenSolaris server so that I can mount them over the network on any of my other computers. I can run the same installation of, say, Windows XP, on my Windows 7 desktop, my Linux laptop, and the Solaris server itself. I only switched to it initially because it ran much faster than VMWare, but the ease of cross-platform use is a huge bonus.

Re:Word for the wise

[Zeussy]

A 32bit application can get upto 3gb of ram on a 32bit Windows, by being compiled with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:Yes Linker flag, and have the end user tweak his boot options to use the /3gb switch.
But this is a huge hack, and can still cause issues with drivers etc still believing that the kernel has reserved half the ram, but is instead restricted to the top 1gb.

Re:Word for the wise

[Pr0xY]

Complete BS, PAE isn't a hack, in fact the way paging is done on x86-64 is designed very similarly to 32-bit with PAE, using an extra layer of indirection as PAE does. (Yes your 64-bit CPU actually likely has 48-bit's of **physical** memory).

Also, you are completely ignoring things like disk cache, which can massively improve system performance. Sure no **single** application will be able to use all of that memory, but the system as a whole can easily get that high if it has the RAM to work with.

For example, I have a Linux box with 4GB of RAM using a 32-bit with PAE kernel. Routinely after a few hours my disk cache is upwards of 3GB. The system is noticeably faster once the disk cache is populated vs immediately after startup.

Take a look at the Intel docs, PAE isn't a hack in any way.

Re:Word for the wise

[nxtw]

No, the big disadvantage of Win64 is astonishingly bad driver support. I've seen systems that couldn't handle USB mice!

If a USB "mouse" doesn't work with a standard HID driver, then there's a problem with the mouse..

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, saying the 286 had a 1MB limit would have been a lie. It could address up to 16MB and was marketed as such from day one. Some motherboards had limits based on RAM sockets (I seem to recall the IBM Model 30 having a 2.5MB limit). Marketers did point out how limited the 286 was when the 386 came out with it's 4GB limit. That we've been stuck on 4GB is a testament to how large 4GB actually is.

Re:Word for the wise

[nxtw]

You are making your assumptions on the base that just because you bought a 32-bit version of an application you will automatically receive the 64-bit version of it, free of charge. That is not the case, as even Microsoft doesn't just give their 64-bit OS to those who bought the 32-bit one. To their eyes it's a completely separate product which the customer must pay in order to access.

Microsoft hasn't generated separate 32 and 64-bit product keys for Vista, 2008, or 7, at least for retail/multiple activation keys.

Re:Word for the wise

[Chris Burke]

I disagree. Paging is fundamental to memory management. You like having memory mapped to 4KB pages, but call it a hack when those 4KB pages are mapped to different physical memory locations? Why?

What the heck does that bolded part mean? Because I can't see how it has anything to do with PAE specifically. "Paging is fundamental" I 100% agree with, and "4kb pages are mapped to different physical memory locations" is a basic function of paging and thus also something I 100% agree with. Which leads me to believe that I can't be reading what you wrote correctly.

PAE is a hack not because of anything to do with paging, but with what a poor version of paging it is. It extends the physical address space allowing for more memory in a system, but only pretends to extend the virtual space, actually creating "windows" of virtual memory with a table-of-page-tables that is logically equivalent to just having multiple CR3s and swapping them out whenever you want to see a different "window", and has all the happy implications for application design that this implies (like... having to be very, very careful with pointers and simply not being able to use them for a lot of data).

Apparently PAE is even more efficient than 64bit addressing. It's the faster option, although you're 100% correct about the per-process limit being roughly 3GB, which means it'll be obsolete shortly. Games, video editing, and virtual machines will be first to benefit from 64bit > 4GB memory usage.

Um yes it's more efficient than 64 bit, for that narrow range of time and space where people have more than 4GB of RAM in their system, but have no individual applications that would like to use it. Seeing as people had infinitely RAM hungry media apps before they had 4GB in their desktops, that time and space is... never as far as I can tell. But in any case, outside of that narrow range, either 32-bit or 64-bit is better.

What I've always wondered is why Windows uses 4KB pages. Larger pages are far more efficient. The guy who made 7-zip tried hacking in multi-megabyte pages, and had a 15% speedup. O_o

4kb is more efficient from a memory allocation standpoint, so it makes some sense as a default, but yeah a lot of applications can benefit from 2m pages. I'd bet they do use it in places in the kernel, just like Linux does.

Heck, AMD recently added 1GB pages, obviously a bone for the database folks. :)

Re:Word for the wise

[BikeHelmet]

Okay, we're on the same page - I just worded it poorly.

I guess I'd call PAE more of a "clever back" than "ugly hack". ;)

Re: multi-megabyte pages

The point of the hack was that it didn't waste memory. You can read more at the sourceforge page: http://www.7-max.com/

You sound like the kind of person that'd gain something from looking into it. :)

Re: Memory pages

If wasting memory is the primary concern, I think 16-64KB pages would be an improvement without introducing much/any wastage. The smallest Windows process is 16KB, after all. But there's probably a reason 4KB is the default across most operating systems.

Re:Word for the wise

[Chaos Incarnate]

You can install Virtual PC just fine on Home editions, you just don't get the free XP license.

Re:Word for the wise

[Trogre]

Except for all those lovely registers on AMD64 processors that you can't get near unless you're running in 64-bit mode.

Re:Word for the wise

[dissy]

And even at 0.5%, you're grossly overestimating the people who need to run 16-bit apps. Any Win16 app is at least a decade old and is no longer supported by the company that published it -- assuming they still exist! If you have mission critical processes relying on such software, you're insane.

Actually I think relying on a 16 bit app released by a company that hasn't been in business for enough time to not be able to release a newer version which was 32 bit, and not formulating and executing a migration plan LONG ago, is insane.

Re:Word for the wise

[Eskarel]

The basic reality is that pretty much every CPU you can still buy for a desktop(and a laptop is not designed for the kind of use you're talking about) is already 64 bit and has been for a few years. 64 bit Operating Systems are available and stable. Vista x64 is great, Linux has supported 64 bit for years, I haven't used XP x64, but it's supposed to be fine and dandy to.

Given these circumstances and the fact that any other solution to the 4 GB problem is basically a nasty hack with performance problems. There's really no excuse not to go 64 bit.

Yes you don't have to go 64 bit, and you can try and hack your way around the limit any way you like, but in the end whatever you get will be less than what you'd have if you just went 64 bit. Hell, if you own Vista Ultimate, you can use the same license key and go 64 bit for free(or shipping and handling for the disk if you don't have one on hand).

Re:Word for the wise

[sarkeizen]

Because if they didn't, what profit motive would Microsoft have to support this conspiracy?

I'm not really sure where you're getting 'conspiracy' from here.

The point being is that we simply wouldn't have bought new machines (in the case of non x86-64 machines) or updated the OS (in the ones that were). As an aside XP64 was not (according to our MS rep) licensed for us (so still an OS upgrade) and lacked some hardware support.

Re:Word for the wise

[yoyhed]

I agree with you: Vista x64 is great. I'd like to add that 7 x64 is even better, not only for the usability improvements, but for:

- the much-improved (or updated, I suppose) native x64 driver support, and
- XP Mode, which I guess was already possible with Vista if you also owned VMWare and XP, but it's nice that it comes with 7 Pro/Ultimate.

I'd also like to point out that if you're hearing XP x64 is "fine and dandy", you're hearing from the happy minority. I'd probably be among that group if I stubbornly clung to the past after getting 4GB of RAM and a 64-bit CPU.

Re:Word for the wise

[yoyhed]

I suppose I should clarify that "Vista x64 is great" does not mean I love everything about Vista. It means I had no problems with the 64-bit aspect of it (since 2008 anyway).

Re:Word for the wise

[sarkeizen]

Personally even in the "low end" case I suspect that is unlikely.

Certainly possible but like anything it's the "tyranny of the small sample" isn't it? I'm only judging this from the data we've collected from our managed machines - so modest hundreds. Generally we see people who simply have a lot running. Interesting sub-case this is also true on one of our 'high-end' groups - developers.

PAE also would benefit another small group - those who have 4GB installed but only can use 3-3.5GB.

In any case, if their usage ever changes such that an app would like to use all of their RAM (and I do find it hard to imagine apps that use over 1GB but could never make use of more are common)

Try thinking about having twenty processes running rather than four. I have fifteen right now and I'm not doing any real work. Also 'could never make use' is a weak argument. All that needs to be argued is "more or as useful than". To me, again being able to use PAE on my old machine would have saved me time. 'If usage ever changes' is also weak - nobody is arguing that PAE would be a solution until the end of time but it seems reasonable that a machine could go without replacing or without an OS upgrade until it's EOL. Considering that we already have had a number of users that are in (or near) this boat this seems a reasonable if not likely case.

To me, "practical" also means "not unnecessarily restricted" because otherwise your "practical" solution is just waiting to become impractical when the limitation bites you in the ass.

This seems to simply shift the argument from the definition of 'practical' to the definition of 'unnecessarily restricted'. As well your illustration is weak. Generally you don't adopt an application without any thought as to the requirements.

Basically, if you have more than 4GB of RAM in your system, a 64-bit OS is imminently more practical than the other option.

meh. Suit yourself but that's really "adjectives over evidence" as we say around here.

Re:Word for the wise

[adolf]

Please don't water down the FUD with your facts.

Thanks!

Re:Word for the wise

[yoyhed]

As a side note to those not familiar, VirtualPC is free "as in beer", but not "as in speech", *if* you are running the biz or ultimate version of windows.

Thank you for pointing that out, but was there anyone that actually thought a Microsoft product was "free as in speech"? :-)

Re:Word for the wise

[glennpratt]

Well your commenting on a story about a conspiracy behind PAE being disabled on the desktop.

I realize you don't care so much about that, but mentioned avoiding an upgrade. You almost certainly had the option of buying an x64 OS at the time or purchase. Perhaps there was some trade off for compatibility, but PAE would have required similar trade offs.

Re:Word for the wise

[glennpratt]

Wrong. This was only true for short lived XP and 2003 x64 variants, which were released later than the original versions and didn't have identical features/codebase. Vista, 7, Server 2008 and presumably future OS keys work on 32 bit and 64 bit versions of their software.

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

That and the PAE switch confuses me. Why can't we then use PAE and run eg 10 apps each needing 500MB?

Re:Word for the wise

[DavidRawling]

This is so the Common Files area can have identically named (but functionally different) libraries and files.

For example,

• C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\$Vendor\$Library\KillMe.DLL (the 32-bit version)
• C:\Program Files\Common Files\$Vendor\$Library\KillMe.DLL (the 64-bit version)

An application can be x86 or x64, and the code is effectively the same - it loads KillMe.DLL from it's own "%PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files" folder and just works, without trying to figure which filename to use based on bit lengths / compile time options (Windows sets the environment appropriately for the bit length of the app).

Basically Windows Installer redirects 32-bit only installers to the (x86) folder and an installer or app marked x64-aware gets the normal locations.

Re:Word for the wise

[BitZtream]

Sigh... allow me to point out how you are wrong in virtually everything you said.

Yea, but even if you enable 16GB of RAM under 32bit Windows, XP and Vista can only give 2GB of it to photoshop, MAX. No SINGLE application can utilize more than 4GB of virtual address space under PAE, had half the address space is reserved for the lernel.

Any application can easily access up to 3GB of memory directly, use the /3GB switch when booting. Using more than 3GB requires PAE and indirect addressing like the days of old.

PAE however is disabl;ed under 32bit OS as it has risks, especially for lots of drivers, and letting general users have access to this, without a process for validating and supporting all their apps under it (which most companies do not have programmers who understand this type of addressing), would be a support nightmare.

No its not, PAE is FOR 32 bit OSes, 64bit OSes don't need PAE, they can directly access the larger amounts of ram. PAE will be useful for running lots of apps that aren't aware of the API to utilize the extra memory, or allow apps that use the proper API to indirectly address larger amounts of ram, which is FAR faster than using some sort of swap like Photoshop does when it needs more RAM than available. PAE is turned on by default on clean installs of Windows XP SP2 so that DEP (The no execute bit) can function as the code in XP requires it.

Its possible for an application under 32bit windows to also take advantage of AWE (Address Windowing Extension). This requires the lock Pages in Memory privilidge for the app, and some pretty extensive code level support. This can allow a 32 bit app to use more than 4GB of RAM under 32bit. It is not very efficient.

Two things, first you just contridicted pretty much everything you wrote before this point, and second its FAR FAR more efficient than using disk based swap of some sort.

It;s also one of the API's you're paying extra for under the server licnece that you do not get under the workstation license (XP can't do this, Server 2003 can). Typically this is reserved for apps with massive datasets (DBs over 2GB, large video files, massive images, etc) in situations where the code can not be easily ported to 64bit but where support for AWE can be added.

Funny, works on my XP machine, not sure why it doesn't work for yours. Photoshop is fully aware of the extensions and will be happy to use more than 3GB of ram in XP 32 bit if you have more available.

Why must you people spew shit you have no clue about, to the point that you contradict yourself in your own post. If you're going to do this shit at least read the entire wikipedia page before you start posting rather than bit by bit as you post, it'll make you a little more believable and you'll get some extra knowledge too.

Re:Word for the wise

[fm6]

And yet that same mouse worked fine with the HID driver on Win32.

Re:Word for the wise

[Bert64]

A lot of places are stuck with legacy applications and/or hardware that only works on 32bit versions of windows...
I know several places that buy machines with 4GB, and install 32bit xp resulting in 1gb of memory that is completely unusable, and they have several reasons for wanting to do that ranging from old apps, to a desire not to support multiple versions across a large network.

There is even lots of proprietary software that is still being supported, and yet it doesn't support 64bit... A lot of commercial vpn clients for example.

Re:Word for the wise

[Bert64]

Why then, did XP support more ram before SP2?

Re:Word for the wise

[PRMan]

Everywhere I have worked, there is some vendor that still only supports Access 2.0.

And another one that only supports IE6 (but that's usually the intranet team)

Re:Word for the wise

[PRMan]

Yeah, you would think so. And that's what I keep saying. But every company/client I've worked at has had at least one somewhere.

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh... allow me to point out how you are wrong in virtually everything you said.

That was a given from the very first word, "Yea".

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus you won't get much advantage from a 64 GB capable kernel unless you run multiple programs that all require 1-2 GB of memory. Come to think of it, such usage is most likely on a server.

Which world do you live in, where the server is the machine running Photoshop, 3DS Max, After Effects, Premiere, and the desktop is the one running only a single program (e.g. Oracle) which needs (or really likes) a huge flat address space?

Re:Word for the wise

[plastbox]

Off topic I know, but I have to ask. How does Opera make it into the same class of memory-muchers as Firefox? I've tested it a bit (nothing serious, just mucking about) and the worst I've seen as of yet was Firefox (3.5) using 1,2GB of memory while Opera (9.64), running 3 times as many tabs, claimed ~350MB.

Saying "Firefox and Opera" when talking about memory usage is like saying "Hummers and Matchbox cars" in terms of fuel efficiency.

Re:Word for the wise

[Pentium100]

I have more open tabs in Opera than in Firefox, so right now they are both using about 350MB of RAM, but FF usually uses more RAM. Still, FF and Opera are two programs that use the most RAM on my PC.

Re:Word for the wise

[coolsnowmen]

...What, you mean in hardware? Yeah, it's a four entry table containing page table entries. From a hardware standpoint it's faster than 64-bit because reading the "fourth level" page table doesn't require a memory access.

I'm having hard time following that argument about computer architecture. How could it be faster? To my [limited] understanding, either the address map is in cache in the TLB/page table or it isn't-- no matter if it is a PAE page table or not, If it is there, the memory request proceeds quickly, if it is not, then the operation is interrupted while the page table is updated. And all that assums that some lookahead pipeline didn't preupdate the table.

Re:Word for the wise

[JoeZeppy]

unless you run multiple programs that all require 1-2 GB of memory

Hey, Welcome to Lotus Notes 8!

Re:Word for the wise

[fm6]

In other words, every place you've worked has been plagued by the aforementioned laziness, stupidity, and bureaucratic ineptitude. For that matter, I've seen a lot of it too. Doesn't make it acceptable. And there are organization that manage to keep up. Well, most of the time.

Refusing to upgrade Microsoft Access for 10 years is particularly mind-boggling. How hard can it be? It's just a simple relational database. And I suspect that most people don't even use the relational features (which are pretty clumsy) and are basically using it as a flat-file editor.

And databases are crucial to a modern organization. Not keeping that part of your workflow up to date is asking for trouble.

Re:Word for the wise

[Sandbags]

This works under the server OS, but under Vista and XP, the kernel takes half. I know of no option to bypass this. Maybe this works if they're in higher memory spaces, but i don't know that theres a way to force an app to use a higher space if there's some in the default.

Re:Word for the wise

[Sandbags]

1) yes, the /3g switch can enable a 3x1 use instead of 2x2, but it's not universal across all versions of windows 32bit OS. the /3g switch is not a PAE function, it's seperate, and in most practiced cases, unless the OS is doing little more than beig a host platform for an app, the whole machine will run slower even though a single app might be able to perform better making use of additional RAM.
2)PAE is disabled in all the Microsoft 32bit client OS. It can be ENABLED though boot.ini hacks (or in Vista though a comand utility, as it has no boot.ini file). I'm also not disputing on any level that PAE is not as efficient as swap files, I'm saying it's not as efficinet as native RAM addressing above 4GB as a 64bit OS can do...
3) AWE can not be used on client OS, it can be on servers only. it actually can allow a single app to exceed 4GB of used memory. This is reserved RAM, and not part of the active memory pool for the app, but yes, it is more efficient than using a swap. Again, i did not contest that, but why not just use 64bit???
4) Apparently AWE support is available in XP SP2+, but it still limited to 4GB total RAM allocation. I can't find references to AWE in Vista at all. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx

I'm not arguing you can't get an app to see 4GB in a client OS, and not arguing you can't use more than 4GB total, I'm just saying, WHY BOTHER, use 64 bit if you need to do that, nearly every app that really takes advantage of this supports 64 bit OS...

Re:Word for the wise

[Anonymous Coward]

And it'll be a long time before 64-bits is insufficient. :)

I really feel some dejà vu here...

Re:Word for the wise

[plastbox]

Which is kind of sad, really.. Badly done scripting and even worse plug-ins aside, a website shouldn't really ever need to be bigger than 1MB with most pages easily optimized to fit into 200KB. That'd mean you could cram 1750 websites into 350MB of memory!

Yes, I know this is not how it works. Execution of the program itself also takes memory, etc. etc. Seems kind of strange though that my Opera is currently using 233MB to display 7 tabs that all-in-all clock in at no more than 5MB in actual size. Something's amiss here..

Re:Word for the wise

[Pentium100]

Probably if you rendered those pages in 24bit uncompressed BMP, they would sill not take that much space.

This is because memory is quite cheap so programmers do no feel the need to optimize their programs. The same can be said about CPU and hard drive. Newer versions of programs usually are bigger and slower but do not offer any useful features to justify it (Adobe Acrobat Reader, later just Reader was always used just for opening and printing .pdf files, but for some reason each version was bigger while doing the same function, now I use Foxit, which is smaller and faster).

Re:Word for the wise

[plastbox]

No, that just doesn't cut it. I know we're past the time where people had to write optimized asm to get the absolute most out of their computers but still..

Are you claiming that programmers are so lazy they.. what? Pad Opera's memory so each page takes 32-33MB? I see no way in hell holding a 300KB document in memory takes 33MB, no matter how damn lazy the devs are. It's just mind boggeling.

Re:Word for the wise

[Pentium100]

They probably use cache in memory (I know I have disabled cache in HDD and only left it in memory), also they cache the pages that you have visited, so they can be rendered immediately after you press the back button.

I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[NetNinja]

As soon as Microsoft finds out they will put out a patch that closes this exploit down and God help you if you are running anything in production.

But of course none of us would ever do that :)

Re:I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[Binestar]

Why run Vista32 on a 64 bit processor at all? You can use the Vista32 license key to install Vista64 and have native support for the memory without going into test mode on windows. Much better than the possible issues you'll run into trying to hack this together. Especially if you're going for something production.

Re:I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[Stauken]

Because OEMs are hacks and will occasionally do things like put versions of Windows that are 32 bits on 64-bit hardware. Very frustrating to unbox a brand new machine w/ a 64 bit processor to find Vista Home loading. On top of that, the way that Vista now handles 'restoring' the hdd means that unless you have all of your drivers handy, a copy of 64 bit vista, and some luck on your side, you are stuck utilizing a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit machine. This spells doom for the average home user, who (typically) wouldn't even be aware of the differences and performance gains that they could have with an upgrade.

Re:I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[binarylarry]

Microsoft software in production?

ROFL at those poor fuckers

Re:I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[Binestar]

Who *ALSO* wouldn't be doing the signing of their own kernel as described in the article. Your argument fails to compel.

Re:I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[tepples]

Why run Vista32 on a 64 bit processor at all?

Windows Vista 64-bit ordinarily requires kernel-mode device drivers to be signed with a commercial Authenticode certificate. If you override this at startup, the desktop shows an ugly "Test Mode" banner in all four corners. There is a user-mode driver framework, but it makes no provision for input devices or a couple other cases. Some makers of low-volume hardware, such as hobbyists working on assistive input devices for people with disabilities or LPT-style bit-banging interfaces to systems too tiny/cheap/old for a proper USB connection, may want to develop drivers for their own hardware without paying $$$ per year to a certificate authority.

You can use the Vista32 license key to install Vista64 and have native support for the memory without going into test mode on windows.

As far as I know, you'll get the "test mode" again once you install a self-compiled driver.

Re:I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[mlts]

Two reasons I see for having a 32 bit OS:

1: 64 bit editions do not have 16 bit MS-DOS support. Of course, this can be mitigated by DOSBox, Windows XP Mode, and other VMs, but a number of places have a specific application that they want to work out of the box and not have to install/configure any more than they have to.

2: Netbooks have a low resource footprint. A 32 bit OS can work better in the 1-2GB max and still offer a workable machine.

Re:I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used an unsigned driver in vista 64 bit and I've never seen this. I used EasyBCD and selected the option for allowing unsigned drivers in 64 bit windows and everything was fine. No test mode or anything.

Re:I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[bertok]

I've used an unsigned driver in vista 64 bit and I've never seen this. I used EasyBCD and selected the option for allowing unsigned drivers in 64 bit windows and everything was fine. No test mode or anything.

I just did something similar on Windows 7 x64, and no "test mode" there either!

Re:I can see the Ciritcal patch comming!

[pseudonomous]

For 2. intel atom's are 32 bit, so you don't have a choice. I guess you've got a choice if you've got a nano.

2^32

[Anonymous Coward]

I say no more.

Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[FictionPimp]

Seriously, there are no real technical reasons why we can't just run 64bit operating systems. Let's just stop selling 32bit ones.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Black Parrot]

Seriously, there are no real technical reasons why we can't just run 64bit operating systems. Let's just stop selling 32bit ones.

Good idea.

Unfortunately, lots of Windows software won't run on 64-bit Windows XP. Even Windows Update tells you you have to close the 64-bit WIE so it can run the 32-bit version to fetch the update... how lame. Then half the updates won't install, for reasons that aren't made clear.

It should be clear by now that Microsoft, like every other corporation on the planet, isn't going to do a damn thing unless their share prices depend on it. When there's overwhelming consumer demand for 64-bit computing, they'll start fixing their consumer software to support it.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[sanosuke001]

Finally, a sane voice in the crowd. I've been saying this ever since Intel and AMD started making 64-bit CPUs. There is no reason to support 32-bit right now. It just confuses people and keeps us from advancing technology and software. Hell, I would love to see AMD/Intel drop support for all the x86 instructions and just stick to the new x86-64 ones. There are a lot of hacks required for backwards compatibility of x86. Hell, switch to a new architecture.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[FictionPimp]

I've ran Windows vista 64bit with very few issues. I assume by the time windows 7 is commonplace these issues will be even less.

I'm just saying MS needs to just draw the line somewhere and stop making 32bit operating systems.

My mac is soon to be mostly 64bit with SL coming out. My linux machines have been 64bit for at least a year. Let's get the windows machines up to snuff.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because there are no 'technical reasons', we're good to go with moving across? There are other reasons why this wouldn't work in practice: NON-technical reasons.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[SlashDev]

I think there are. Many 32-bit apps don't run very well (or at all) under a 64-bit OS. This is why open source software is so great, you can re-compile for a new target OS, without having to wait on the bureaucratic stuff.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[SilverEyes]

...I'm just saying MS needs to just draw the line somewhere and stop making 32bit operating systems.

My mac is soon to be mostly 64bit with SL coming out. My linux machines have been 64bit for at least a year. Let's get the windows machines up to snuff.

Windows 64-bit has been around for awhile. Server 2k8 R2 has no 32-bit support, indicating that the next client version of the Windows OS will be 64-bit only. Currently Windows 7 ships both 32 and 64 bit on the same disc, hopefully reducing confusion and increasing 64-bit installs.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Just Some Guy]

Many 32-bit apps don't run very well (or at all) under a 64-bit OS.

...for the set of values of "OS" equal to "Windows". 32-bit apps run just fine on 64-bit Windows and OS X.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[frank_adrian314159]

there are no real technical reasons

Well, other than for crappy software that assumes that an address is 32 bits...

Or hardware that doesn't have drivers for 64-bit systems...

So, yes, no technical reasons at all...

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows have improved since XP 64. Windows Update isn't run through IE anymore.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume by the time windows 7 is commonplace

Don't count your chickens before they hatch...

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[nurd68]

Minor technical reason:

64 bit OS's don't run on 32 bit CPUs, which is most of the netbook lines. While there are a few Atom models which are 64 bit, the majority of them are 32 bit. I don't think MS wants to abandon that market to Linux, since it would allow netbooks to become a Linux "gateway drug".

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Locke2005]

No technical reasons, but there are economic reasons to use 32-bit instead of 64-bit code. 64-bit code tends to use more memory! Granted, memory has gotten much cheaper, so that reason is much less valid than it was a few years ago.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Mashiki]

Unfortunately, lots of Windows software won't run on 64-bit Windows XP. Even Windows Update tells you you have to close the 64-bit WIE so it can run the 32-bit version to fetch the update... how lame. Then half the updates won't install, for reasons that aren't made clear.

You actually don't understand the problem. It's not that 64bit programs don't work, is that 64bit extensions weren't written for that application. That's why they want you to use the 32bit version, because those extensions were written. That's a serious problem on their end, and all the other developers like Sun, Macromedia, and so on. As for updates...my install date is 2/6/06, and I think I've had one issue with one update due to it being in-use by another service, which required a reboot.

Yeah it's not hard, and if you know what you're doing it's a fine OS.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[EXrider]

There are a lot of hacks required for backwards compatibility of x86. Hell, switch to a new architecture.

They tried this with Itanium and PowerPC (so long Mac G4 and G5 support!). It failed, consumers clearly want x86 cruft. Yeah, we're talking about the same consumers that actually bought P4's. We can additionally thank IBM for sucking so bad on the PowerPC alliance.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[CannonballHead]

XP x64 was awful. Don't use it. Vista x64 is way better than XP x64.

Windows 7 x64 seems to run quite smoothly. I haven't run into a 32 bit application (driver, yes; application, no) that I can't run. Granted, I don't run a ton, but several old games a few apps (like Sibelius).

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

64-bit XP is ANCIENT. If you're going to criticize, don't criticize a 6 year old OS.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Sandbags]

All NEW Os should be 64 bit, sure. unfortunately, we have to have a 32bit solution that maintains continued support for all the legacy apps we can't leave behind.

Sure, we could "restrict" the sale of 32 bit apps, and restrict all signed apps to 64 bit here forward, and most people buying new machines to work with new stuff, and common apps would not have issues, but about half my back catalog of personal software would either have to be replaced or run in a VM (and currently, many games don't like VM or don't work at all due to lack or GPU virtualization).

I run 64 bit on my "core" machine, but too many apps are not yet compatible. Apple if farther ahead in this process than microsft, but they have slightly more control over how their app programmers put out code, and more of them are 64 bit ready today (or close). With the move to Windows 7, 64 bit should be starting to become more of a norm. Windows 2008 is actually driving this by forcing devs to released signed drivers only under 64bit, which means at least the hardware vendors are thinking in 64 bit code methodology and techniques. MOST 32bit apps, that don't require underlying driver support or cross application connectivity, work under 64bit. I Microsoft pushes the industry right, Windows 2010 will be 64bit only, and Windows 8 should likely be as well...

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[harlows_monkeys]

As long as we maintain the ability to run 32-bit programs on those 64-bit operating systems. I have Perl programs that parse and analyze very large log files. Their memory usage went up by a factor of about 1.5 when I switched to a 64-bit system. This was not good, since they were running at about 90% of RAM on the 32-bit system. On the 64-bit system, they swapped heavily, and my nice 10 minute report became a not so nice all day report.

I now pick the 32-bit version of Linux distributions, even on 64-bit capable hardware, unless I actually need 64-bit.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're talking about Windows, I've been running Windows XP-64 for over 2 years now and haven't had any issues with it other than finding drivers for 1 or 2 obscure pieces of hardware (which I eventually found).

In fact, Xp64 has been the most stable OS I've run from MS. I only reboot for the occasional automatic update and pretty much leave it running 24/7 other than that. It runs all of the games I play on it (FO3, Sacred 2, heck, even Starcraft) and I haven't had any issues with any of the software I was running on regular XP.

Really, 64-bit OS's should only be an issue if you're running older, unsupported hardware that you can't reasonably replace.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Alzheimers]

Seriously, there are no real technical reasons why we can't just run 64bit operating systems. Let's just stop selling 2-bit ones.
Fixed that for ya.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[julian67]

There is one great reason to support 32-bit...the fact that most consumer/office PCs in use are still 32-bit hardware ;-) Even on 64-bit hardware if you don't have much RAM, i.e. 2GB or less (that's still almost every consumer/office computer sold) then it probably makes more sense to run a 32-bit OS. The trend for more compact PCs means that it isn't necessarily simple to add another stick of RAM. To do so on my budget desktop machine would entail removing the HDD, the DVD-RW to get to the RAM. Removing the HDD and DVD-RW means removing the CPU heatsink and fan because it's all crammed in so tight. This is way past what most people are able to do, and the machine is quite typical of the small, quiet PCs people buy these days. There is still extremely widely used software which is offered only in the form of 32-bit executables and if it also needs to be run under an emulator then the cost of a 32-bit compatibility library+OS/API emulation is usually very crappy performance. And many hardware and software vendors are simply lazy and slow. They offer a Win32.exe, and maybe an x86 rpm and a deb and that's it. Whether it's a driver or a crucial piece of software they effectively limit the end user's ability to choose 64-bit. And how about all the old ancillary devices which will *never* have a Windows or Apple 64-bit driver? Throw out your scanners, old printer, copier and so on. And good luck with all those personal music players which are not USB compliant and need a vendor supplied driver....that's many millions of devices which people use every day. Actually this is one area where MS could make a huge positive difference because if they make 64-bit Windows 7 ubiquitous then the pressure is very much on all the 3rd party software and hardware suppliers to keep up, or lose sales. I notice that every boxed sale of Windows 7 will include both 32-bit and 64-bit editions so that's a start in pushing a large number of not very interested consumers to make a better choice very easily (I'm assuming people will actually choose to buy Windows 7, unlike Vista). Meanwhile GNU/Linux seems the best choice for desktop 64-bit at the moment for desktop use because all the free software is by definition ready and available, as well as Adobe Flash and proprietary graphics drivers from Nvidia and ATI. 32-bit compatibility is also good and fairly close to being a non-issue....almost there. I've no experience of the latest OS X but it seems like Apple have put an awful lot of effort into making 64-bit OS on 64-bit hardware the default choice, and are taking the opportunity to have many users switch via the latest upgrade. Clearly they are looking at a 64-bit only environment long term. MS as usual are moving more slowly.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Alzheimers]

The Intel Atom:

Atom implements the x86 (IA-32) instruction set; x86-64 is so far only activated for the Atom 230 and 330 desktop models. N and Z series Atom models cannot run x86-64 code.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[tepples]

There is no reason to support 32-bit right now.

Other than publishers of proprietary applications who won't port them to 64-bit. Some of these publishers are even out of business. Compare to the transition from PowerPC to Intel Macs during the Tiger era: without the Rosetta emulator, it would have been a much rougher experience.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[geekoid]

that's XP. don't rhink the poster was talking abot eliminating existing OS's. Just don't release anymore 64bit releases.

This could be market to their advantage.

Also, include the ability to run apps in a 32 bit mode..oghwait they already do.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[moredots]

This guy has it right. These days, if you're putting more than 4GB of RAM into a computer, I'm sure you're running a processor that supports 64-bit Windows. Personally, I feel that companies producing software that is not 64-bit compatible are being lazy and irresponsible. They're negatively affecting the software industry by requiring other developers to produce both 32- and 64-bit versions of their software since both systems are still supported. How much of that developement time and spending could be redirected to improvements to other areas or eliminated and passed on to consumer or stockholders as increased profit margins?

The 4GB RAM limit is a smart move by Microsoft to push computing towards 64-bit. Basically, if any software company wants their product to run on a system with more than 4GB of physical memory, they'll have to start supporting 64-bit Windows. Perhaps it's not about the money. Perhaps it's a political move to push progress.

Disclaimer: I don't care about backwards compatibility, and I look down on anyone who uses legacy software as a lesser person.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[nabsltd]

Unfortunately, lots of Windows software won't run on 64-bit Windows XP.

I have no issue at all running standard 32-bit apps on XP64.

Most of the software that won't run is shell extensions, or other software that provides some DLL that must be loaded by other apps (like Microsoft Management Console plugins). Some of this can be worked around if there are both 32 and 64-bit versions of the app, and then you might not be able to use all the plugins you want at the same time, but at least you can get the job done. Because of this, the default for multi-version apps is usually the 32-bit one (like the IE shortcuts on the desktop and quick launch point to the 32-bit versions).

Overall, though, the design of 64-bit Windows userspace is a complete kludge. Why Microsoft chose to make the "standard" directories (Program Files, System32) the 64-bit versions is beyond me, especially when they already had a precedent for new names ("System" for 16-bit and "System32" for 32-bit). In 64-bit, they have "System32" for 64-bit and "SysWOW64" for 32-bit.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Finally, a sane voice in the crowd. I've been saying this ever since Intel and AMD started making 64-bit CPUs. There is no reason to support 32-bit right now. It just confuses people and keeps us from advancing technology and software. Hell, I would love to see AMD/Intel drop support for all the x86 instructions and just stick to the new x86-64 ones. There are a lot of hacks required for backwards compatibility of x86. Hell, switch to a new architecture.

There's a big difference between "not shipping 32 bit OS's" and "not supporting 32 bit". The latter would break the majority of software out there for the Windows platform, since very very few companies are shipping 64-bit versions of their products. And I don't mean just closed source software either - major players like Firefox and OOo do not offer 64 bit builds. (In the case of FF, it's available but only through third parties last I checked). The former - shipping only 64 bit OS's is a lot more reasonable, since most 64-bit OS installations can support both 32 and 64 bit applications.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Legacy hardware doesnt always have drivers for 64 bit. And im not talking about ISA cards, but modern usuable hardware from companies that are still in business that will not work on a 64 bit system becasue they wont write a driver for it.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[GreatBunzinni]

There may not be any technical reason to still hold on to a 32-bit OS but there sure are economical ones. As soon as you have an entire office filled with desktops, each one running tens of thousands of dollars in software that were released only to the 32-bit platform, then you will consider that there is a very good reason to still run a 32-bit system.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

64-bit Windows support 32-bit applications (only drivers need to be recompiled).

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[guruevi]

Excuse me, but both Linux and Mac OS X have very, very good support for 32-bits apps under a 64-bit OS. The only ones that don't seem to be able to pull it off is Microsoft. I had to install Windows XP 64-bit last week for someone trying to access all memory in their machine and a) none of the drivers worked, even for simple things like USB and other 'generic' hardware where in Linux or Mac you can load 32-bits kernel extensions or generic USB and network controller drivers b) SP3 is not even available yet for Windows XP 64-bit c) the system is slow and doesn't run half the software.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[PitaBred]

Virtualization to the rescue! I run a 32bit Windows VM on my 64bit Linux machine for when I just have to have Windows. Runs 32bit apps fine, everything except majorly graphically intensive apps. As long as you aren't talking about playing 32bit games, you're good to go.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Sycraft-fu]

32-bit software runs fine. Of course it assumes an address is 32-bit, it uses 32-bit pointers. Not a problem, it is run in its own 32-bit address space. Means it can only access 4GB of RAM but that's ok, it couldn't access any more than that (actually not even that much) on 32-bit Windows.

As for drivers, yes this can be a problem. If you have specialized hardware, it may not have 64-bit drivers. However it is a pretty rare problem these days. All the major vendors have 64-bit drivers. In particular Intel, AMD, nVidia, VIA, ATi, IDT, Creative, LSI, and 3ware all have 64-bit drivers for all their modern products. That accounts for almost all the hardware out there.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[SlashDev]

Those who claim that 32-bit windows software runs 'just fine' under 64-bit Windows OS, don't run multi-threaded, memory intensive and complex apps, such as renderers, etc...

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[BenoitRen]

Screw this "memory has gotten cheaper" thinking. It's what programmers use to justify their sloppy programming. Use memory efficiently, so other programs can use it.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the kind offer. I would love a new 64-bit system with OS. My shipping address is...

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Locke2005]

Pointers in 64-bit code take up twice as much memory as pointers in 32-bit code. No amount of skill or fastidious programming is going to change that fact. Integers also take up twice as much memory. A good programmer who knows the bounding values of the variable can always define it as a smaller type, but that doesn't prevent the compiler from going ahead and padding the memory structure out to a 64-bit boundary for alignment, and using packed data can seriously slow down your memory access.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Just Some Guy]

Crap. I thought "Linux" and wrote "Windows".

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Simulant]

      I gotta say, Win 7 x64 has been surprisingly compatible. No show stoppers in a few months of use, unlike Vista and XP. I think it's time.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[petermgreen]

The question is will OEMs be forced to offer both in thier customised install and/or recovery discs or will users of machines from uncooperative OEMs be forced to hunt down a generic disc and then telephone activate?

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[tepples]

64-bit Windows support 32-bit applications (only drivers need to be recompiled).

And hardware makers have allegedly been using the transition from 32-bit and XP to 64-bit and Vista as an opportunity to force people to re-buy hardware.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Carrot007]

>Why Microsoft chose to make the "standard" directories (Program Files, System32) the 64-bit versions is beyond me

Maybe you are simple?

>Program Files

Makes perfect sense to have the default PF dir as the os native one.

>System32

And you should know this one to. To allow easy recompilation of programs that assume System32 is the System Dir. Yes this should be System64 but MS obviously knew that this would fuck up a lot of major applications and that versions would take longer so they decided to do it that way.

MS's main mistake in 64/32 windows is that from 7 there should only be one version and 32 should only be installed if thats all the hardware supports, leave nothing to the idiots.... .er users.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Carrot007]

> I think

Try again, you seem to be failing.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, but my Windows x64 system with 8 GB of ram has all native 64bit drivers and works perfectly. I prefer real working native device drivers over gross hacks that would allow 32-bit apps to run in ring 0. I don't even want to think about it.

Obviously I wasn't stupid enough to try windows XP x64 or compare it to the current version of operating systems available from other vendors. Doesn't Windows XP have an IPv6 stack too? What year is this?

Until realitivly recently there were a shitload of 32-bit IOCTLs not mapped properly in the Linux environment breaking 32-bit compatibility in strictly user mode applications. (Thumb through the kernel change history and you'll see what I mean) I've personally run into this problem a number of times... So yea if you get a linux distribution and the maintainers compiled everything on the 64-bit platform and you use it...No problems but also non reflective of the platforms 32-bit/ABI compatibility.

I've had exactly zero 32-bit apps fail to run on my 64-bit windows system. From my experience unless it loads a kernel driver its virtually guaranteed to be compatible.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[petermgreen]

Excuse me, but both Linux and Mac OS X have very, very good support for 32-bits apps under a 64-bit OS. The only ones that don't seem to be able to pull it off is Microsoft. I had to install Windows XP 64-bit last week for someone trying to access all memory in their machine and a) none of the drivers worked, even for simple things like USB and other 'generic' hardware
This is a PITA, the truth is there is little generic hardware in a modern PC, you need specific drivers for almost everything. These drivers need to be ported to 64 bit.

This has been much more of a problem for windows than for linux because of the different approaches taken. In linux driver developers are strongly pushed into sending thier drivers into the kernel tree so the kernel devs can work on things like making them 64 bit clean en-masse. On windows you are generally at the mercy of the hardware vendor.

b) SP3 is not even available yet for Windows XP 64-bit
Despite the name XP proffessional x64 edition is not really an edition of XP. It's really an edition of server 2003 so it uses the server 2003 service packs. Server 2003 service pack 2 is only about 6 months older than XP service pack 3.

c) the system is slow and doesn't run half the software.
I can't comment on your particular software load but most stuff i've tried ran fine and I didn't notice any performance issues. The lack of a netware client was annoying though.

What software specifically did you have problems with?

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Ant P.]

using packed data can seriously slow down your memory access.

In my /proc/cpuinfo/flags there's one called "misalignsse"; I'm guessing it's not quite as serious on this hardware...

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that your problem is caused more by your coding skills than the address size of your CPU. ;)

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[werelnon]

I'm with you! As soon as you get on the phone with Logitech and get them to write new 64bit drivers for the Logitech Force joystick and wheel. They've stated that these older peripherals are never going to get 64bit drivers so I, and any one else who has perfectly good 5+ year old devices, will have to throw them away and buy new (probably inferior) devices to go with my 64bit Windows. Pretty expensive upgrade.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Thing 1]

Disclaimer: I don't care about backwards compatibility, and I look down on anyone who uses legacy software as a lesser person.

Yeah, but you still walk and read books, right? Hypocrite.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if it makes sense in your situation, but you can install 32-bit apps along side 64-bit apps in Linux. Some distros handle this better than others. Debian unstable has what looks like it will have rather good support for it with the more recent version of apt (see ia32-apt-get), although I would not recommend that as production-ready quite yet (it's pretty new, only in unstable), I expect it to show up in Ubuntu probably two releases from now.

The easiest way is to just manually compile the 32-bit app, but if you have a lot, then it is probably less trouble to just run 32-bit PAE as you describe.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Sir_Sri]

Windows XP 64 has never been anything but terrible. Vista 64 and 7 64 are both pretty good. For the 0.1% of uber users who needed 64 bit and XP, they should have changed to something else, it would have been cheaper and less headache inducing. For everyone else Windows XP 64 is an example of a company demonstrating that something can be done, not that it should, or will be supported reasonably by anyone.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[harlows_monkeys]

I'm going to go onto a solid wooden deck capable of withstanding a magnitude 9 earthquake and guess that you know little about Perl data structures. :-)

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[BikeHelmet]

That's an artificial limitation, too. Sun proved you can run 64bit operating systems and virtual machines on 32bit CPUs. Obviously it's slower, though, since 64bit operating systems assume the existence of some speed-enhancing CPU features.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked. My Pentium 4 said no.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[gendusoa]

That's an artificial limitation, too. Sun proved you can run 64bit operating systems and virtual machines on 32bit CPUs.

Huh? Since when did Sun prove this?

Obviously it's slower, though, since 64bit operating systems assume the existence of some speed-enhancing CPU features.

You mean like the existence of a 64-bit CPU?

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

List some.

For me, I have had Vista64 since release, and even complex peices of software like console emulators work perfectly fine. The very few appplications that dont work are mostly limited to utility software that was written (and has not been updated since) for 32 bit windows.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[BikeHelmet]

Huh? Since when did Sun prove this?

Sometime last year.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/12/22/virtualbox-2-1-supports-64-bit-guest-operating-systems-on-32-bit/

(first link on google)

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Jeremy Erwin]

The cruft takes up less space on the die every year. At least apple got rid of the bios.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Citizen of Earth]

I have Perl programs

I think I've isolated your problem...

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[drinkypoo]

You can force the package to install (as you will have to do since the arch differs) then use getlibs to download and install all the 32 bit dependencies.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[cbhacking]

Completely incorrect. Very few 32-bit (user-space) apps will care. Some software (such as antivirus) includes drivers, and those do care (kernel-mode code has to be the same number of bits as the kernel itself) but outside of that extreme minority (most of which have been ported to x64 anyhow) user-mode software is fine. Windows x64 includes both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries, 32-bit programs can invoke 64-bit programs and vice-versa, and for plug-ins that are 32-bit only (Adobe Flash being a well-known example - no 64-bit version for Windows yet) Microsoft includes 32-bit versions of many programs (such as IE).

Of the 30-odd standard user (not System) processes running on my Windows 7 x64 machine right now, the majority (75%-ish) have the "*32" in Task Manager, indicating a 32-bit process. Exclude those programs that are from Microsoft (such as cmd.exe) and that percentage rises to nearly 100% - the only 64-bit third party apps I'm running are for my video driver and printer (no AV installed). I play 32-bit games, run 32-bit software development tools, browse the web with 32-bit Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and such (with 32-bit Flash and Foxit Reader), IM/video chat using 32-bit Pidgin, Skype, and Google Talk, connect to *nix boxes using a 32-bit ssh client and forward the remote programs to my 32-bit X11 server, run scripts on 32-bit perl and python binaries... you get the picture.

It's true that 16-bit programs won't run, but that's about it. For those, you can either emulate a 16-bit CPU (DOSbox) or virtualize a 32-bit OS (such as Win7's "Virtual XP Mode").

Oh, and before you ask, yes I use Linux too (just not at the moment). Plenty of 32-bit on there too, although not as much (since somebody has ported almost every open-source app to 64-bit).

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[drinkypoo]

Got rid of the BIOS? How do you load an OS? Toggle switches on the front panel?

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[cbhacking]

Out of curiosity, what apps are those (that "are not yet compatible")? Unless it needs a kernel-mode driver for some reason, a 32-bit application shouldn't even know if it's on a 32-bit or 64-bit OS unless it specifically checks for whatever reason. True, 64-bit programs can't use 32-bit libraries (and vice versa), but that's why Windows ships with 32-bit versions of all the public DLLs.

Also, WHQL (driver certification) for Vista requires 64-bit drivers, not just Server 2008.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see how this would be an issue if you only have 4 gigs of ram, but how would your report run if you had 8? 1.5 * 4 = 6 so you wouldn't have any paging.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Jeremy Erwin]

Hmm. Quoth the Wikipedia:

In January 2006, Apple Inc. shipped its first Intel-based Macintosh computers. These systems use EFI and the Framework instead of Open Firmware, which had been used on its previous PowerPC-based systems.[8] On April 5, 2006, Apple first released Boot Camp, which produces a Windows drivers disk and a non-destructive partitioning tool to allow the installation of Windows XP or Vista without requiring a reinstallation of Mac OS X. A firmware update was also released that added BIOS support to its EFI implementation. Subsequent Macintosh models shipped with the newer firmware. All current Macintosh systems are also able to boot BIOS Operating Systems such as Windows XP and Vista. (With the exception of the Xserve platform)

EFI

I suppose 16 bit mode will never die.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just going to put it bluntly because there's no other way to do it.

You are wrong.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just... buy enough RAM for your computer?

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[14erCleaner]

Seriously, there are no real technical reasons why we can't just run 64bit operating systems. Let's just stop selling 32bit ones.

4G ought to be enough for anybody.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[bertok]

XP x64 was awful. Don't use it. Vista x64 is way better than XP x64.

Windows 7 x64 seems to run quite smoothly. I haven't run into a 32 bit application (driver, yes; application, no) that I can't run. Granted, I don't run a ton, but several old games a few apps (like Sibelius).

Mod parent down, he has no idea what he's on about.

Windows XP 64-bit is exactly the same as Windows 2003 Server 64-bit. They share the same service pack files! The only difference is some minor licensing restrictions (can't install server components, 2 CPU sockets max, etc...). Drivers that work for either will work for both.

I had XP 64-bit on both my desktop at home and my work laptop for years, basically since it was released. I never had any issues with it, even on fairly unusual hardware. It is as light-weight as XP, but has 64-bit kernel caches and buffers, so it runs much better on the same hardware, and ran circles around both 32-bit and 64-bit Vista. Only now that Windows 7 is out have I upgraded my laptop to that, because Vista was just too painful to use in comparison to XP 64-bit.

Mind you, I wouldn't install anything other than Windows 7 64-bit on desktop PCs these days, but before that, XP 64-bit was a very nice OS.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[bertok]

There may not be any technical reason to still hold on to a 32-bit OS but there sure are economical ones. As soon as you have an entire office filled with desktops, each one running tens of thousands of dollars in software that were released only to the 32-bit platform, then you will consider that there is a very good reason to still run a 32-bit system.

Wow, the Mods are asleep or not paying attention to the dozens and dozens of post which have pointed out that 32-bit apps run just fine on 64-bit windows.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP 64-bit?? WTF are you smoking!! That OS is like 7 years old!! Maybe try using something more recent like Vista 64-bit or Windows 7 RC1 64-bit?? I have no problems with Vista 64-bit and any application I use.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[yoyhed]

I don't feel like trudging through your whole comment since you neglected to use paragraphs, but I'd just like to point out that most mid-range pre-built consumer desktops now come with 4-8GB of RAM. Check out Best Buy sometime if you can choke back the vomit long enough :-)

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Put "for" before the parentheses. :)

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[dontmakemethink]

I'm reminded of AltiVec in Mac G4 CPU's, another advancement that required software support, which was slow to come to market. It included SIMD processing so it was a major upgrade. AltiVec support wasn't common in audio software until over 4 years after the first G4 shipped. It was enough to send me to XP, which implemented SIMD entirely at the OS level without special programming in applications, haven't looked back. Haven't had the slightest inclination to use Vista either.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when your logs get big enough that perl actually needs the 64 bit address space?

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to have to call BS on that. I've been using XPx64 on both my work PC and my laptop for about two years now, and have found it great. Seems to be a huge improvement over XP32 in terms of stability and not slowing down over time.

When I first started using it, there were a few things like firewalls that were difficult to find, but i haven't had any issue at all in the last year or so.

Honestly, I've found it to be among the most reliable OS I've used (98se, XP32, Vista32, various K/Ubuntus, openSUSEs, Mandrivas......so on)

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporation you say? Fuck corporations, who needs them?

Be free. http://debian.org/

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there actually any true 64-bit processors? I haven't really kept up, but I believe the Opteron only had 48 external address bits, so it could really only address 256 TebiBytes rather than the 16 ExbiBytes that a true 64-bit processor could address.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Sycraft-fu]

We still use XP64 at work for some computers that have apps that need more RAM. Only problem I've seen is drivers. Some companies have chosen not to do 64-bit XP drivers. However, they are pretty rare. The major companies, Intel, AMD, nVidia, ATi, etc all do XP64 drivers and that accounts for 99% of the hardware out there.

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Vahokif]

I use XP x64 and I've never had any problems (apart from it not supporting 16-bit installers, but I can get around that with a VM). Are you sure you're not talking about Windows XP 64-bit Edition (for Itanium) as opposed to Windows XP x64 (for AMD64)?

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Bert64]

Some of us have had 64bit Linux/Unix machines since the 90s..

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Bert64]

You can't introduce a new architecture, no matter how superior it is... The prevalence of proprietary binary-only software will (and has already on several occasions) ensure that any new architecture will fail miserably if it's not compatible with x86 (itanium, power, alpha) or take off extremely slowly if it is (amd64).

I have IA64 and Alpha machines that make great linux boxes, and i can recompile virtually anything that runs on x86, but what i don't have is the proprietary crap like flash. Now imagine trying to use these machines where 90% of the software you want to run only comes as binaries... You would be faced with things that don't run at all, or run extremely slowly through emulation.

This is what happened to IA64, native code ran very quickly, but emulating x86 code was far slower than using real x86 hardware, if 90% of your apps are running in that mode then just using x86 hardware will be faster.

There is no incentive for commercial software producers to port their apps to IA64, because there are too few potential customers. There is no incentive for customers who want commercial software to use IA64 because there is little or no such software available.

So long as a large proportion of the software people want to run is commercially produced and shipped without source code, new architectures will fail.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[GreatBunzinni]

You failed to understand that re-purchasing a vast set of licenses for some 64-bit OS just for the sake of it being 64-bit when your entire portfolio of applications and hardware (you need drivers) was built for the 32-bit platform... Well, it doesn't make any sense. It means that you intended to migrate your office from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS without any other justification beyond "I felt like it", which carries a hefty price tag and absolutely no technical justification.

And moreover, the claims that 32-bit apps "just run fine on 64-bit windows" are made from the same people who claimed that your Windows XP apps "just run fine on Windows Vista" and we saw how that panned out.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[bertok]

You failed to understand that re-purchasing a vast set of licenses for some 64-bit OS just for the sake of it being 64-bit when your entire portfolio of applications and hardware (you need drivers) was built for the 32-bit platform... Well, it doesn't make any sense. It means that you intended to migrate your office from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS without any other justification beyond "I felt like it", which carries a hefty price tag and absolutely no technical justification.

And moreover, the claims that 32-bit apps "just run fine on 64-bit windows" are made from the same people who claimed that your Windows XP apps "just run fine on Windows Vista" and we saw how that panned out.

Why would you have to repurchase application licenses to upgrade Windows? I'm not aware of any applications that tie licensing to the OS in such a low level way. That's just bizarre. Most apps are licensed by seat, concurrent user, or 'enterprise agreement'. I know of some apps where you can't switch between Linux and Windows like that, but the only apps I've seen prevent an OS upgrade within the same family are backup and anti-virus apps, but most allow it. Also, since Vista, Windows licenses are interchangeable between 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

You do realize that just because an application was "built for 32-bit platforms" doesn't mean it'll magically perform terribly on a 64-bit machine, right? In fact, my experience has been the opposite: A 64-bit OS is noticeably faster for 32-bit apps, because the disk cache is much larger. There's a little-known limit in 32-bit Windows: it can't create a disk cache much larger than 450MB, no matter how much physical RAM you have, because of the way the kernel address space is laid out. If you run apps that exceed that limit, your disk gets thrashed even though you have free memory. A user running a couple of Office apps can easily exceed that limit.

Most people don't realize that even 32-bit server editions can't go over that ~400MB limit. It cracks me up to see 32-bit file servers with 8GB of memory. I've seen 10-fold reductions in disk IO rate by switching to 64-bit.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[drinkypoo]

Understanding computers, you fail it. BIOS is a generic term for any boot loader included on the system used for your IPL. Perhaps you mean "the PC BIOS". Oddly enough, both of my most recent laptop purchases are PCs (one Acer, one Asus) with hybrid PC/EFI BIOS. Yes, friends, I can boot EFI if I want, or I can boot DOS and run industrial control programs. Thank you for falling directly into my trap. I assume you are a mac user.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[julian67]

I did use paragraphs but what I forgot to do was set formatting to plain text :-)

USA based Best Buy is somewhat unrepresentative of what the other 95% (!) of the world might buy. Looking at stores here so I can make an equally anecdotal and parochial assertion, I find that many new PCs are still sold with only 2GB RAM, many even with 1GB. These are the boring machines which most people buy and use at home, or have in their place of work.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[BenoitRen]

Yes, they take up more space. But my point was that "memory has gotten cheaper" should not be used as an excuse to justify the step to 64-Bit, which would use more memory.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[sanosuke001]

I wouldn't necessarily advocate dropping 32bit compatibility immediately. The best option would be to start with 64bit OS (no 32bit version) that supports 32bit software (like windows does now) and then, after a revision or two, phase out 32bit mode. Set a date, say, sometime in December of 2012 and say, "Any chips made after this date will not have support 32bit"

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[FictionPimp]

I work at a small community college with a dell contract. We just bought a new round of computers to replace our 5 year old computers in labs. Everyone one of them is a 64bit capable machine with 4 gigs of ram.

We are not big spenders at all.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[FictionPimp]

I still don't consider netbooks computers. But yes, this is a valid argument for keeping around 32bit windows. At least for another release.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[KMMac]

Seriously, there are no real technical reasons why we can't just run 64bit operating systems. Let's just stop selling 32bit ones.

Mac introduced 64bit OS X in August 2003. Macs are all dual core minimum 64bit. Mac introduced 64bit Windows support in Boot Camp recently.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Bert64]

There is nothing stopping OSS from shipping 64bit builds, there are already 64bit builds of OOo and Firefox for platforms other than windows...

It's just that the benefits of shipping a 32bit binary outweigh the benefits of 64 in these cases... If support for 32bit was dropped, then recompiling as 64 would not be terribly difficult (and as you pointed out, third parties are already doing so).

Currently if you were to ship a 64bit firefox on windows, you would have to ensure users download the correct version, and you would lose access to most plugins such as flash.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[yoyhed]

While it's true that my evidence is anecdotal, given that the USA is not the entire world, it is a fact that RAM is cheap as hell now, and that every recent processor that's not in a netbook is 64-bit, which is probably why all these computers come with way too much for their target market: Joe Schmoe USA thinks he's getting a faster computer because it has 12GB of RAM.

No, Joe: it's because it's a 3 GHz quad-core. He'll probably never use more than 1-2GB for his own applications (but will indeed use another 2GB on the crapware that comes preloaded, and Windows+Superfetch).

Hmm. I'm not sure I'm supporting my original point anymore, mostly since I don't remember why I was making this argument in the first place. Oh well, here goes.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[GreatBunzinni]

Why would you have to repurchase application licenses to upgrade Windows?

I wasn't referring to application licenses but OS licenses. If want to replace your current windows version with some other (let's say, the 64 bit one) you need to pay for those licenses.

You do realize that just because an application was "built for 32-bit platforms" doesn't mean it'll magically perform terribly on a 64-bit machine, right?

The point is that running 32-bit apps on a 64-bit platform doesn't give you any advantage whatsoever. That in turn means that an office entirely equiped with 32-bit systems, from OS to every single application, doesn't have absolutely any incentive towards an OS upgrade just for the sake of it being 64-bits. If there isn't a single incentive to justify all that money spent on an upgrade other than bragging rights about running a 64-bit OS then such an upgrade would only mean that a lot of money was thrown down the drain. That, in business, is a no-no.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Bert64]

Assuming your 64bit system had 1.5 times as much ram as the 32bit, would those scripts run faster than on the 32bit boxes?

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I agree there's nothing stopping it - but as long as it's not being done (and as long as closed source vendors such as Adobe are not shipping 64 bit versions of their products) , we're still going to be stuck with 32 bit support in Windows-land at least.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

That's not a bad way to go about it. But it's a chicken and egg kinda thing. Vendors won't start distributing 64 bit windows apps until chipmakers force them too. Chipmakers won't force them too until Windows refuses 32 bit support. Windows won't refuse 32 bit support while vendors refuse to distribute 64 bit apps.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[gendusoa]

Ah. I see "32-bit host operating systems". Here's the quote from the VirtualBox manual:

In particular, 64-bit guests are supported under the following conditions:
1. You need a 64-bit processor with hardware virtualization support (see chapter
1.2, Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V), page 11).

Re: Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[nabsltd]

>System32

And you should know this one to. To allow easy recompilation of programs that assume System32 is the System Dir. Yes this should be System64 but MS obviously knew that this would fuck up a lot of major applications and that versions would take longer so they decided to do it that way.

Or, they could have handle it exactly like they handle it now, but just with different mappings.

Any 32-bit program that asks for "System32" gets "SysWOW64", and any 64-bit program that asks for "System32" gets "System32".

So, the correct answer would be to have any 32-bit program that asks for "System32" would get "System32" and any 64-bit program would get "System64", which would allow them to get the version that matches.

Re:Let's just get over this and move to 64bit

[Sandbags]

A lot of apps don't know where to find their own parts if they're looking for dlls in %systemroot%\system32 instead of %systemroot%\syswow64 due to hardcoded paths in the app, or dependencies on 3rd party DLLs or windows components that don't exist or don't share the same filenames/patths under 64bit.

Hmm

[ShooterNeo]

I skimmed the article.

What it boils down to is : it's possible for 32-bit windows to use more than 4 gigs of memory. Microsoft doesn't allow this for the consumer licensed versions of Windows. While the article makes various allegations that Microsoft is doing this to be bad, the author found out that many device drivers intended for 32 bit windows will break if PAE is enabled. In addition, PAE is an ugly hack, and it still won't let a single thread access more than 3 gigs of RAM. These days, single applications like games and video editing software can easily use more than 3 gigs of RAM.

Long story short : Get, and use 64-bit Windows for Windows machines with a lot of RAM. Since 64-bit XP is poorly supported, and Vista is dog-shit, then that means you should be using 64-bit Windows 7.

Re:Hmm

[blackomegax]

I wouldn't go so far as to call vista dog-shit and then recommend 7 in the same breath.
They're basically the same with 7 being the feature equivalent of a service pack.

Vista isn't that bad, either.
XP has stone-age memory management. (this is not a reference to the 4gb limit, but to how it actually MANAGES the 4gb)

Re:Hmm

[aarmenaa]

If I remember correctly PAE was actually enabled in at least some versions of Windows XP 32-bit. It was disabled in one of the service packs or something because it caused a bunch of trouble for people with code that wasn't PAE-aware. I may be mis-remembering things, but that's how my fuzzy view of history is choosing to remember things.

Re:Hmm

[Volante3192]

While the article makes various allegations that Microsoft is doing this to be bad, the author found out that many device drivers intended for 32 bit windows will break if PAE is enabled.

Negative.

The claim is drivers will break if you have over 4gb ram. PAE is enabled by default on 32 bit Windows because DEP is enabled by default and DEP requires PAE.

Furthermore, there is no proof of drivers affecting Windows if more than 4GB is in use because you can't create an environment to test these claims. The only 'proof' comes from statements from Microsoft.

FTA:

when Microsoft makes out that defective drivers are so widespread and dangerous that 32-bit Windows Vista cannot be allowed to use memory above 4GB even as a configurable option, how is anyone to know the truth of it? Nobody can test even one driver on 32-bit Windows Vista with the licensing data that Microsoft supplies for it.

Re:Hmm

[ShooterNeo]

RTFA. The author found that Nvidia drivers will break on his test machine. Given that Nvidia makes about half the graphics cards, and the point of a Windows box is to play games, that's a show stopper. I would do the same thing if I were Microsoft.

Look at it this way : if Microsoft DIDN'T put a limit of 4 gigs, they would have to support that hacked together mess called PAE for consumers. This way, as computers commonly sold start to come with more and more memory, people will naturally migrate to 64 bit and the device driver writers will be forced to comply. That's where the real problem lies : lack of 64 bit driver support is the only reason that everyone isn't using 64 bit windows already.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

...you should be using 64-bit Windows 7.

You are assuming that 64-bit Windows 7 isn't dog shit as well.

Re:Hmm

[ShooterNeo]

Well, it's the least shitty 64 bit OS available that will play mainstream games and allow you to run most software written for desktop PCs over the last 30 years.

Re:Hmm

[binarylarry]

Which is quite a conundrum, as otherwise its the *most* shitty operating system available.

Catch22's are a bitch, eh comrade?

Re:Hmm

[HeronBlademaster]

It's not nearly as bad as 64-bit XP or 64-bit Vista.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Since 64-bit XP is poorly supported

Odd... All of my equipment, drivers, software works very well under Windows XP x64....

Intel i7 920, 12GB of RAM, Intel AHCI controller running 8 933GiB drives - all supported, all very fast...

Re:Hmm

[ShooterNeo]

Aye. Linux is no utopia, though. Truth is, Windows works pretty darn well so long as you cater to it's "special needs" properly.

Re:Hmm

[Ephemeriis]

You can enable PAE on pretty much any XP machine.

The problem is that lots of software written for home users makes the assumption that you'll have 4 GB RAM and does weird/stupid/bad things with PAE enabled.

These days it really doesn't matter though... There's x64 versions of Vista and Windows 7 available for the same price as x86. If you've got that much RAM, just install the appropriate OS and call it done.

Re:Hmm

[geekoid]

yur skimming missed some key points, and your summary is wrong.

SO by Skimming it you relly mean you read the /. review of the article and then made gross assumptions.

Re:Hmm

[rdebath]

support that hacked together mess called PAE

Snigger.

PAE is the 64bit page table mode. When a 32bit OS enables PAE it's enabling 64bit pages tables.

When an OS is in the 64bit modes it MUST use PAE.

Re:Hmm

[Tweenk]

Aye. Linux is no utopia, though. Truth is, Windows works pretty darn well so long as you cater to it's "special needs" properly.

Aye. Windows is no utopia, though. Truth is, Linux works pretty darn well so long as you cater to it's "special needs" properly.

Re:Hmm

[SilverEyes]

Now, now, perfectly symmetrical arguments never solve anything!

Re:Hmm

[astroblaster]

I'm using 64-bit "dog-shit" to do production work on 8GB of RAM with very near zero problems.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

From someone named ShooterNeo I expect things like this. Sure some applications CAN use over 3 gigs. Do you go over that limit. Occasionally I'll power use by watching a dvd and playing eve online on one monitor and play left 4 dead on the other. How much ram does that use? Less than 3 gigs.

Vista isn't any more or less shit than ubuntu. If you can utilize the system through your own knowledge and skill it will do anything you want. I would expect someone with the name ShooterNeo to understand that.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

PAE is not a hack, PAE is a decade old industry standard. The author explicitly mentions ignorant people like you in one of the chapters. And regarding the buggy drivers, the author also mentions that not only are there few, there would be even fewer if coders could actually test them.

By the way, remember how MS wanted to limit that one windows edition to 3 running apps? Now we found they also limited memory to 4GB. Next thing you know, you'll be purchasing a license to use more than one cpu core, graphics card or usb port.

Re:Hmm

[ShooterNeo]

Actually I use x64 XP. But, certain applications and drivers won't work. My smartpen, an old scanner, and so forth. Most annoyingly is I can't have separate color profiles for my dual displays in 64 bit XP - the program that lets you do that is 32 bit only.

Re:Hmm

[shutdown -p now]

While the article makes various allegations that Microsoft is doing this to be bad, the author found out that many device drivers intended for 32 bit windows will break if PAE is enabled.

No surprise here - a year-old blog post by Mark Russinovich lists and explains Windows memory limits in great detail, including the part about drivers. Quote:

"Windows Client Memory Limits

64-bit Windows client SKUs support different amounts of memory as a SKU-differentiating feature, with the low end being 512MB for Windows XP Starter to 128GB for Vista Ultimate and 192GB for Windows 7 Ultimate. All 32-bit Windows client SKUs, however, including Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000 Professional, support a maximum of 4GB of physical memory. 4GB is the highest physical address accessible with the standard x86 memory management mode. Originally, there was no need to even consider support for more than 4GB on clients because that amount of memory was rare, even on servers.

However, by the time Windows XP SP2 was under development, client systems with more than 4GB were foreseeable, so the Windows team started broadly testing Windows XP on systems with more than 4GB of memory. Windows XP SP2 also enabled Physical Address Extensions (PAE) support by default on hardware that implements no-execute memory because its required for Data Execution Prevention (DEP), but that also enables support for more than 4GB of memory.

What they found was that many of the systems would crash, hang, or become unbootable because some device drivers, commonly those for video and audio devices that are found typically on clients but not servers, were not programmed to expect physical addresses larger than 4GB. As a result, the drivers truncated such addresses, resulting in memory corruptions and corruption side effects. Server systems commonly have more generic devices and with simpler and more stable drivers, and therefore hadn't generally surfaced these problems. The problematic client driver ecosystem led to the decision for client SKUs to ignore physical memory that resides above 4GB, even though they can theoretically address it."

Re:Hmm

[Hatta]

PAE is not a hack, PAE is a decade old industry standard.

As if hacks never became long standing industry standards.

Re:Hmm

[Eil]

Long story short : Get, and use 64-bit Windows for Windows machines with a lot of RAM. Since 64-bit XP is poorly supported, and Vista is dog-shit, then that means you should be using 64-bit Windows 7..

...which isn't for sale yet.

Alternatively you can use any distribution of Linux or BSD released in the last 5 years.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it uses a completely new paging mode called "long mode", which has FOUR levels of page tables. (The PAE happens to be set to enable this mode, but it's not like the old PAE mode.)

Re:Hmm

[The MAZZTer]

"These days, single applications like games and video editing software can easily use more than 3 gigs of RAM."

I don't know of any games that do. Furthermore 64-bit processors aren't yet widespread enough that game devs are going to drop support for 32-bit yet, AFAIK. Keep in mind too that not many people have the boot.ini switch needed for 3GB of application address space (and that switch might cause problems with poorly written drivers, too) so the apps you describe would need to be limited to just 2GB. 3GB is only available for apps explicitly compiled with a switch so they can be marked as supporting it. I can see video editing software requiring 64-bit, though the alternative of a carefully-managed application-based page file (or more simply a temporary project file on disk) is possible it would be very slow.

Anyways I think the most I ever saw an app take up legitimately (IE not a memory leak) was 800mb (it was Uru). I think Team Fortress 2, the most recently released game I play a lot, takes up about 600 or so, though to be fair it's not like I watch it in Task Manager while I play. Don't forget a lot of texture data and stuff gets offloaded to the GPU's memory.

Re:Hmm

[ShooterNeo]

Crysis and other big games eat over a gig when you're playing them.

Supreme Commander will crash in big battles because it runs out of memory. It hits the 3 gigabyte limit. Part of that is the game's extremely inefficient architecture : I'm sure there must be memory leaks as well, but in any case, in a big battle with thousands of simulated troops it will run out of memory and crash.

Video editing software eats memory like candy.

All the desktop processors released for the past several years have 64-bit support, I thought even the atom does.

Like some of the other slashdotters here, I think they should just stop selling 32-bit OSes. It's inevitable that PCs will routinely have more than 4 gigs of RAM, so we might as well get the transition over with now, so that those of us with decent PCs and 64-bit OSes can enjoy the undivided attention of driver and application developers.

My current machine is almost 3 years old, and it has 4 gigs of RAM. My i7 box, when I build it, will most likely be loaded with 12 gigs.

Re:Hmm

[Bert64]

There is only one mention of nVidia in the article, which states that he was unable to perform several tests until he updated his video driver, after which the tests worked.

It doesn't say what the problem with the original driver was, just that the later version fixed it. As i understand it, early versions of vista were dogged with driver problems, particularly video drivers, it's highly likely that his original driver would have caused problems with or without PAE.

Re:Hmm

[Bert64]

It is possible to use windows 2003 as a workstation, all of the stuff (directx, sound, video etc) necessary to support typical desktop/gaming use is right there, and it often performs better than xp for gaming. 2003 has pae support fully enabled, and will use more than 4gb of ram on a 32bit install, and supports the same drivers as xp.

On the various systems i've tried it with, i have encountered no problems installing appropriate video/audio drivers and using 2003 as a gaming platform. The most recent box i've done this on was a Q6600 with 8gb of ram, everything works just fine.

32b?

[Lord Ender]

Are there people out there who have more than 4GB of memory but still run old 32b operating systems? How uncharacteristically anachronistic of any technology enthusiast...

Re:32b?

[Icegryphon]

Yeah sadly I have plenty of those Xeon Prestonia's
Great chips but no EM64T support, It is not like you can flash them to support it either.

Re:32b?

[jgtg32a]

Yes I saw one yelling at the lady running the Dell kiosk at the mall

Re:32b?

[Monkeedude1212]

You'd be surprised. You see alot of people go into BestFutureBigBlockStoreUSAToday and say "My computer's running slow!" and they go "You need more Rams!" and the customer goes "How much will that cost me?" and they go "300 Bones, and we'll do it for you!" and next thing you know, Blogger Buddy Bill has 8 Gigs of RAM on his 32b XP. And because he paid so much, he insists theres a difference!

Re:32b?

[kigrwik]

I do.

Most of my company's code is not 64-bits clean, so it's easier for me to run a 32bits OS (Linux) to run 32bits processes, even though I have 8GB of RAM. I usually load 6 to 8 processes simultaneously, as I work on very splittable data sets.

Besides, I expect fewer problems with proprietary software (nvidia drivers, flash) on 32bits Linux.

Your mileage may vary.

Re:32b?

[pavon]

Yeah, I hate it. I write software to process large scientific datasets. Corporate IT still will not support 64-bit XP or Vista, so all the scientists/engineers are running 32-bit. It is usually easier to try enabling 3GB user space or PAE and hope their drivers are complaint than it is to get them to upgrade their OS.

Re:32b?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. What in the world is this doing on /.? Most competent computer manufacturers will not even sell a machine with over 4GB unless it is loaded with a 64-bit OS. Why stay with 32 bit? What is so great about staying with 32 bit? IMHO us geeks need to quit trying to go backwards with technology and just make the tiny jump to 64-bit. DEATH TO 32-BIT BASED OS'S! Muahahahaha!

Re:32b?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try running a corporate print server supporting a myriad of devices from lasers to inkjets to p'copiers to faxes. You'll find 64 bit support sorely lacking.

Re:32b?

[gad_zuki!]

Thats essentially the problem here. XP was released in 2001. Expecting it to have all the kludges to run past 4GB or ram is ridiculous. Thats like criticizing Ford for not putting ABS and air bags in a '64 Mustang.

If people want to access more RAM then they should upgrade to a 64bit OS and be done with it.

Re:32b?

[Facegarden]

Are there people out there who have more than 4GB of memory but still run old 32b operating systems? How uncharacteristically anachronistic of any technology enthusiast...

I tried 64 bit XP many years ago and it was terrible. Driver support was crap and you couldn't run old 16 bit programs, which can occasionally be useful.

I'm sure it's better now, and I've actually got a 64bit laptop showing up in the mail today, that will be eligible for the free Windows 7 upgrade when its available, but I wouldn't waste my time with 64bit XP, and since Vista sucks (i used it for years and gave up recently) I am not surprised that most people stay with XP and naturally stay with 32 bit.

And I don't run 4GB of memory because it would be a waste... but I wish i could have more, so I see the point of the article.

-taylor

Re:32b?

[Entropius]

Seems like you need to upgrade Corporate IT.

Re:32b?

[rdebath]

Windows 2000 had (has) everything needed to get past 4Gb.

Windows 2000 only came in 32bit version

If Windows 2000 (PRO) is installed on a machine with 4Gb of RAM it will use it all, even the memory with a physical address above the 4Gb line.

Windows 2000 datacenter can use 32Gb of RAM before it hits it's license limit.

Re:32b?

[Anonymous Coward]

Through my universities computer acquisition procedure i can order any amount of ram with a system and someone will put 32bit win xp on it. ...which i then replace by a 64bit linux.

Re:32b?

[nabsltd]

Are there people out there who have more than 4GB of memory but still run old 32b operating systems?

I just upgraded my wife's system with a new motherboard, 2.8GHz quad-core CPU, video card, and 6GB of RAM. I kept all the drives (hard, optical, and flash readers) and left Windows XP Pro.

This allowed me to do the upgrade in a few hours and the new system is the same for her, but just a lot faster (old was a 2.8GHz single-core with 2GB of RAM). Sure, it's wasting about 2.5GB of RAM, but at $80 for 6GB, it's not a big deal, and when the OS upgrade does happen, the system will be ready.

Re:32b?

[1729]

Are there people out there who have more than 4GB of memory but still run old 32b operating systems?

Yes.

(In all fairness, though, we don't have more than 4GB of memory per processor.)

Re:32b?

[swilver]

Yup, Windows 2003 here, 8 GB of RAM, 32 bit + PAE. Never gives any trouble and it's a gaming rig.

Re:32b?

[PsychicX]

Actually, quite a few companies ship laptops in this configuration. It allows them to advertise the 4 GB, and very nearly none of their audience will ever be wise to it. The last time I saw this was with a machine purchased literally two weeks ago. It's now happily churning along with Win7 x64, no functionality missing.

Re:32b?

[BenoitRen]

Or how about HD enthusiasts who buy a PS3 and a HDTV and connect them with composite, and then rave about their gorgeous, superior image? I shit you not.

Re:32b?

[Pentium100]

I have exactly 4GB of RAM (with two free DDR1 slots) but 32bit Windows XP only sees 3.25GB. It is enough for me for now and I do not want to format the drive and reinstall Windows (XP64 or 2k3 32 or 2k3 64) because that would mean reinstalling all my apps and that would take a long time (I only reinstall Windows if the current installation is broken beyond repair, but now I have a backup of my system drive so a reinstall seems unlikely :) ).

Re:32b?

[petermgreen]

Round here at uni it's quite common to run systems with exactly 4GB of physical memory and run a 32 desktop edition of windows (which typically gives about 3-3.5GB usable though I have seen one machine as low as 2.5 due to a very address space hungry graphics card).

I haven't seen many people run such operating systems on machines with more than 4GB of ram, but it wouldn't surprise me if some people do (at least in a dual boot configuration).

I know a few people with multiple PCs on thier desk so they can have one for thier real work (running a 64 bit OS with more than 4GB of ram) and another for stuff that needs 32 bit (netware, some specialised hardware etc).

Re:32b?

[Thing 1]

It is usually easier to try enabling 3GB user space or PAE and hope their drivers are complaint than it is to get them to upgrade their OS.

So, is that "death wish" or merely "IT job security"? :)

Re:32b?

[petermgreen]

The inability to run 16 bit windows apps is still there*, driver support has improved though it can still be a problem (for example the first generation ICD2 is never going to get a 64 bit driver)

*and whats more annoying is afaict there is no reason it has to be that way for 16 bit windows apps (for real mode dos apps there are real technical reaons but not for win16 apps) IIRC MS just found some issues and couldn't be bothered fixing them, wine runs 16 bit windows apps on 64 bit linux fine ;).

Re:32b?

[BikeHelmet]

I'm still running 32bit XP on my gaming computer. 3.7/4.0GB available, though. :)

Re:32b?

[BitZtream]

Yes, there are several cases where running in 32bit mode is more efficient. When you double the size of all your pointers, in certain instances, you waste a lot of memory.

Perl is a good example, (probably python as well, no experience myself though). When you're doing massive amounts of string parsing using hashes and such, there are god knows how many pointers thrown around internally to perl, it can add up fairly quickly.

If for instance you're parsing a very large file into 7 byte or smaller strings, the pointers to each of those strings are larger than the strings themselves in 64 bit mode.

Thats an extreme example and not very realistic, but it does happen.

Re:32b?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea at work our current hardware (laptops are swapped just about every year or so) are dualcores with 2Gb ram, WinXP etc. It's shit to develop on. 2-3 Visual Studios, Visio and more just eats it up!

Luckily the next version of our internal systems will be highend laptops with 6-8 Gb ram, SSD disks and more which will arrive next year. I'm well looking forward to that compared to this piece of shit.

Re:32b?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find your views shallow and pedantic sir

Re:32b?

[Dunkirk]

Are there people out there who have more than 4GB of memory but still run old 32b operating systems? How uncharacteristically anachronistic of any technology enthusiast...

Sorry, but I won't apologize. I tried 64-bit Vista, and it was a disaster for me, but all I use Windows for is gaming. (At the time, I was mainly playing Fallout 3, and it just wouldn't work right.) So I run good, ol' 32-bit XP, SP3. I have two 768 MB video cards, so I know this is really hurting me, but I'm kind of stuck. At least I take advantage of my 8GB of RAM when I'm in Linux, using things like VirtualBox and KVM.

I may try the Win 7 RC to see how it fares with gaming on my machine, just before it expires.

I'm half-tempted to try this hack, but I just know -- without even reading the article -- that it will just lead to a reinstall.

Re:32b?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 8 GB of RAM and a 64bit CPU but can't be bothered to look into the voodoo that will allow me to port my existing Debian installation to 64bit seamlessly. By "seamlessly" I mean having the exact same configs and the same apps running perfectly after the switch. It's possible, but I don't have the time to investigate fully, and I suspect I may run into problems with a few apps.

So I just tweaked my kernel to use the entire 8 GB and I'm happy with that. I don't foresee any reason to make the switch in the near future.

Why cling to my existing setup and not just reinstall? Because that's how I like it. My "Linux" install is almost a decade old, has started as Red Hat 6.2 and evolved to RH8, then Fedora, then Debian, and survived several complete hardware upgrades. All while keeping my configs and app setup. I don't see why I shouldn't be able to switch from 32 to 64 bit. I just can't be bothered right now.

Am I a typical user? No.

Re:32b?

[Bert64]

Unless your code is kernel drivers, you will be able to run a 64bit kernel with 32bit userland apps...

On the other hand, 64bit processors have been around since the early 90s, there really is no excuse for code that isn't 64bit clean.

Re:32b?

[idiot900]

That's bizarre. No Linux allowed? At least in my field (biophysics, involving molecular dynamics etc.), everything runs on Linux. Anyway, your bureaucracy must be completely broken if your IT department won't let you have the tools you demonstrably need to do the job you are paid for.

Re:32b?

[pavon]

Linux is allowed and supported, and the software is cross-platform. All the data we process ourselves is done on a 64-bit Linux machine spec'ed for the purpose (32GB RAM, 8TB RAID array).

But most of the employees use their computers primarily for stuff like Outlook, Office, OrCAD, and a spattering of other windows-only applications. We also work with a lot of domain-specific hardware what only has windows drivers / application software. There is just too much momentum to get people to change. The engineers want to be able to analyze test results on their current machine, and so far most of them consider the pain involved in being limited to 1GB of actual data in memory to be less that the pain involved in having to split work between two separate computers.

Re:32b?

[kigrwik]

Been there, done that. 64bit kernels bring me nothing I need, as long as I have PAE.

As for "there is no excuse for code that isn't 64bit clean", that may be true in your mom's basement but for a company that needs to turn out a profit supporting an additional platform is a huge cost. We don't have any customer asking for 64bits versions of our software, so why bother ?

Besides, the first affordable 64bit processors weren't available until the early 2000s and they weren't that much of a success (remember itanium ?).

Re:32b?

[Bert64]

Itanium was hardly affordable, Alpha based systems were available reasonably cheaply in the mid to late 90s and were quite popular with Linux for a while, look at some old linux magazines and there will be advertisements for alpha based machines that were price competitive with mid to high end x86 systems.

And in any medium to large size company, you would have seen 64bit servers from the likes of Sun, DEC, IBM or SGI back in the 90s too.

Just because you don't provide a 64bit version of your code, doesn't mean it should be coded so poorly as to not even support being compiled as 64bit, sooner or later you will have no choice. As for customers asking, we use all kinds of crappy software at work which has a multitude of problems, and the vendors couldn't care less when you report bugs or ask for features, so we simply don't bother anymore.

And it is this corporate "profit above all else" attitude which is making microsoft artificially restrict the availability of PAE, at the expense of customers who might want to use it.

Market segmentation

[Just Some Guy]

And in other news, it costs precisely the same to press a copy of Vista Home Crippled versus Vista L337 OMG, and yet Microsoft charges differently based on which bits are enabled on the particular copy that HP installed on your laptop. This called "market segmentation". If you think a proprietary software company's going to give the cheap version all the same features as the expensive one, just because it wouldn't directly cost them more to do so, then you are hopelessly naive.

Re:Market segmentation

[jcnnghm]

The only cost in software production isn't disk pressing.

Re:Market segmentation

[wastedlife]

Yes, but both "Vista Home Crippled" and "Vista L337 OMG" editions have the same artificial limitation. In the 64-bit editions, it does as you say and limits based on the edition (4 GB for Home Basic, 16 GB for Home Premium, and 128 GB for the other editions), but all 32-bit Vista editions include PAE and yet are still limited to 4 GB of RAM.

Re:Market segmentation

[Just Some Guy]

The only cost in software production isn't disk pressing.

And lemons are yellow, but that's not what we're talking about. The marginal cost of copying and distributing two different versions of the same OS, assuming similar packaging, is nil. The only reason to ship cheap limited versions is to segment the market.

Re:Market segmentation

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it costed them more to code the features that are in Ultimate than those that are in Home Premium. Why should I pay more for a bunch of features I'm not going to use?

The market segmentation exists because of the fact that most people don't need more than Home Premium or Business. The people that want Ultimate will pay for the extra features. Thus this additional feature set exists, but its cost is spread only across the markets that will bear the cost for the additional features.

Honestly, you're proposing that Volkswagen sell BMWs for the same price as a Jetta because they are both cars and both require the same amount of labor to move onto a parking lot.

Re:Market segmentation

[Anonymous Coward]

Though less expensive hardware such as video cards and CPUs in the past have had the same capabilities as their more expensive counterparts, yet manufacturers had artificially limited those. To some degree it was because hardware that was designed as high end didn't meet qualifications and was bumped down to lower end status and thus artificially limited, but that wouldn't stop manufacturers from outright limiting hardware even if it did meet qualifications, just to save on manufacturing costs while charging premiums for non-limited equipment.

Nvidia found out the hard way (as well as Intel in the past) that people are more than willing to try what they can to "unlock" the power of their hardware if it's worth the price. Take hardware unlocking a common GeForce card to run as a Quadro. Why would Nvidia try to save so much in manufacturing costs, then get pissy when they find out that people have figured out how to hardware unlock the cards to perform at the level of what their more expensive, artificially labeled cards can do? Sure you pay for support when you buy a Quadro, but not everyone wants or needs that support.

If a company thinks it can get away with something by artificially limiting the capabilities of hardware (and software) just to save a few dollars or maximize profits by pumping up prices on the more "expensive" models, then that company should expect that people will find ways to take advantage of the hardware or software they paid for to do the things they're capable of. To think otherwise would be naive.

Re:Market segmentation

[Arker]

Except we arent talking about "cheap versions" as you imply, but about among others the "Ultimate" edition.

Re:Market segmentation

[Just Some Guy]

In this case, Vista is the "cheap" version, while Server 2008 is the "full" version.

Re:Market segmentation

[Arker]

In which case the marketing of "Vista Ultimate Edition" would appear to be fraudulent.

Re:Market segmentation

[sad_]

That is the way all 'enterprise' licenses work. You pay a penalty when you run their software on bigger iron. Usualy the price goes up depending on one or a combination of: #cpu, #ram, #users, #data, etc.

There is no difference in the software what so ever, nothing! There is nothing stopping you from buying a license for a tier 1 while in fact you need tier 3 or something (the difference in price might easily be $100.000's!! depending on the software). Ofcourse, if they ever decide to audit you, or you open a support call (oh, yeah, the suppot costs goes up with the licensing cost as well) and you run some kind of diagnostic tool they will figure out you underpaid them and then the trouble starts.

The whole situation is scandalous, i can't believe people still buy this crap, keep paying for it, there are alternatives these days. It's easy to understand how MS made an impact back in the day, compared to most of those other companies they are almost nice guys.

Re:Market segmentation

[Atario]

This called "market segmentation".

You seem to think that because something has a name, it must be acceptable.

Re:Market segmentation

[Just Some Guy]

I don't know where you all got the idea that I'm in favor of it. I never said or implied that I liked the idea.

Re:Market segmentation

[Bert64]

No, the cheaper copy actually cost more to develop, because having developed all the features for the expensive version they then had to do additional work to disable them in the cheaper versions.

Re:Market segmentation

[Chelloveck]

Happens in hardware, too. I've worked for more than one company which sold the exact same hardware in multiple versions at different price points. Well, almost the exact same hardware. There was something simple like a resistor block which told the firmware which model it was, and the firmware would disable features accordingly. Aside from that resistor block and the model number painted on the case, everything else was the same. In one case the firmware simply configured the CPU to insert extra wait-states into memory access to make the cheap model run more slowly than the expensive model.

For reasons I don't even pretend to understand, the marketing guys think that doing this is a good thing.

Re:Market segmentation

[yuhong]

Indeed, the market segmentation that particular limit is about is the desktop vs standard server vs enterprise server versions of Windows. (Only enterprise server support more than 4 GB of RAM via PAE) What is even more unfortunate is that since there is no 32-bit version of Server 2008 R2, there is no 32-bit version of Windows 7 that support more than 4 GB of RAM via PAE!

Re:Market segmentation

[Atario]

Your original comment dismissed the article's news, calling it naive, pointing out other things you think equally obvious, and in general diminishing the importance of what was said. In effect: "this is no big deal". This says to me that you don't think the practice noteworthy, much less objectionable.

If that was not the effect intended, you may wish to review your writing technique.

Re:Market segmentation

[Just Some Guy]

It is naive. Suppose the article was complaining that he got mugged while walking through the hood with money taped to his back. He had ideas of why that might be, including theories like "maybe they thought I was handing out free money". I replied with a more likely explanation involving socioeconomics and criminality.

Have I said that mugging is OK? No. I just offered reasons the muggers might've used to rationalize their actions.

Same here. Market segmentation in software (or in hardware in the way other posters in this thread have described) is painfully stupid. You've already sunk the expense of developing the extra features, so why not sell them to everyone? Even Apple follows that approach; there's no "premium" or "lite" version of OS X. Still, a pack of MBAs will use the concept of market segmentation as justification for intentionally crippling some releases, and my goal was to point that out.

Re:Market segmentation

[jcnnghm]

Unless you never develop a more expensive version because 90% of the market doesn't need the extra features, but are willing to pay for them.

Re:Market segmentation

[jcnnghm]

Or to satisfy the demand for inexpensive software that does everything the average person needs it to do. If each 50% of your software cost $1,000 to develop, you have a market of 1,000 people, and only 10% of those thousand need the last 50% of the software, it makes sense to sell two versions. After all, you can sell to the first 90% of people for $1 each, and to the last 10% for $11 each. The numbers are different for Windows, but the concept is the same. Home users aren't willing to pay more, nor should they have to, for features like PAE, IIS, and the ability to join domains.

Re:Market segmentation

[Just Some Guy]

Um, that's the definition of market segmentation.

Fair price???

[DoofusOfDeath]

"If you want [to be able to use more than 4GB in Vista] without contrivance, then pester Microsoft for an upgrade of the license data or at least for a credible, detailed reasoning of its policy for licensing your use of your computer's memory. ...

I dunno... maybe because they think that price maximizes their profitability?

Or do you feel that they're morally obligated to only make a certain profit margin off of their price?

Re:Fair price???

[Anonymous Coward]

yes.

Re:Fair price???

[Locke2005]

I think their justification is that people that are using more memory require more support. Or perhaps they figure that servers use the most memory, and people running servers are most able to pay exorbitant prices. If the first is true, perhaps they should adopt a business model of giving the operating system away for free and charging for support, much like another popular operating system...

Re:Fair price???

[purduephotog]

- wait, are you talking about Microsoft or Apple?

server hardware vs desktop hardware

[BlackSnake112]

Many server motherboards have more then 4 RAM slots. Many DDR3 desktop motherboards have 6 RAM slots. But it is not uncommon for server motherboards to have 12 or more RAM slots. Can one get 64 GB of RAM with 6 RAM slots? Sure, we can even do it with 4 RAM slots if you can get 16 GB RAM modules. Most people do not do that. And most regular people have no need for 32GB or 64GB of RAM in their desktop. Vista jokes aside, 64GB of RAM should really be in the for servers not desktops. That can be the thinking behind the 4GB of RAM limit for 32 bit desktop operating systems. Most people who use them will not have a need for more then that.

Also when the 4GB of RAM limit was set, RAM was really expensive. RAM prices have dropped a lot over the years. While having 4GB of RAM today can be commonplace, that was not the case 10 years ago.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[Monkeedude1212]

I think we can agree that the average Desktop user does not need 32GB of RAM.

However, could we agree that a good chunk could use 10GB? Specifically anyone who either A) Plays games B) Uses image or audio editting software or C) Likes to have more than 5 applications running at once.

I'd say thats a reasonable piece of the market that is being neglected. Its not that the 4GB RAM limit was unreasonable when it was set, but times are a changing and so should the limit.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Many server motherboards have more then 4 RAM slots. Many DDR3 desktop motherboards have 6 RAM slots. But it is not uncommon for server motherboards to have 12 or more RAM slots. Can one get 64 GB of RAM with 6 RAM slots? Sure, we can even do it with 4 RAM slots if you can get 16 GB RAM modules. Most people do not do that. And most regular people have no need for 32GB or 64GB of RAM in their desktop. Vista jokes aside, 64GB of RAM should really be in the for servers not desktops. That can be the thinking behind the 4GB of RAM limit for 32 bit desktop operating systems. Most people who use them will not have a need for more then that.

Also when the 4GB of RAM limit was set, RAM was really expensive. RAM prices have dropped a lot over the years. While having 4GB of RAM today can be commonplace, that was not the case 10 years ago.

If the system needs swap or a page file, then it doesn't have enough RAM.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[Just Some Guy]

Vista jokes aside, 64GB of RAM should really be in the for servers not desktops. That can be the thinking behind the 4GB of RAM limit for 32 bit desktop operating systems. Most people who use them will not have a need for more then that.

Not understanding how CPU architecture works and the implications of "32-bit" aside, many people need more than 4GB of RAM, even if they don't realize it. You don't have to be an ubergeek to edit home movies on a desktop system these days. Witness the popularity of flash-based video cameras, like the Flip, and how cheap they're becoming. I'll bet that even as I type this, some kid is trying to edit a skateboarding video he just recorded and loaded onto his parents' 512MB XP machine. When it comes to image or video manipulation, there's almost no such thing as "too much RAM", and more is almost always better.

Also when the 4GB of RAM limit was set, RAM was really expensive.

To the tune of $1,000 a MB. That's approximately what it was going for when I bought my first 32-bit computer. That still has nothing to do with why they "set" a 4GB limit.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

"A good chunk could use 10GB"

Brother, I'm a gamer/programmer/image-editor-by-hobby, and I have never touched gig 6 or 7 of my 8GB of RAM. A good chunk could use two, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[HeronBlademaster]

As a gamer with 12GB of RAM, I can't say any of my games use more than 2GB or so each; as a result I must admit that I have no conceivable reason to have 12GB of RAM installed (other than that it gives me the ability to write a post on slashdot containing the words "I have 12GB of RAM installed"). I'd be fine with 4GB.

On the other hand, having 12GB of RAM lets me set up a 9GB ramdisk in Gentoo, which lets me compile OpenOffice.org (with -j9 on a Core i7) in 45 minutes (versus 4 hours using the hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and -j3 on my old Core 2 Duo laptop).

*Ahem*. I don't think most users can use 10GB of RAM. I don't think most users can even use 4GB of RAM. Photoshoppers and video editors don't make up "most users"; but even those people probably don't need more than 8GB (though they should probably be using a 64-bit OS).

Remember, most users don't do anything more than web browsing and word processing, with the occasional game of solitaire or minesweeper thrown in for kicks. 2GB of RAM is plenty for that sort of thing (ignoring the standard jokes about Vista's memory usage).

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[HeronBlademaster]

I'll bet that even as I type this, some kid is trying to edit a skateboarding video he just recorded and loaded onto his parents' 512MB XP machine. When it comes to image or video manipulation, there's almost no such thing as "too much RAM", and more is almost always better.

Sure, 512MB isn't enough, but your average teenager trying to edit a skateboarding video with Windows Movie Maker isn't going to need more then 2GB of RAM, even if he's trying to play the latest Flash-based version of some Facebook game at the same time.

I'd agree that many people need more than 4GB of RAM, but let's not confuse "many" with "most". I would assert that right now, most people only need 2GB of RAM, and 4GB wouldn't hurt, but there's no reason most people need more than that.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[tepples]

If the system needs swap or a page file, then it doesn't have enough RAM.

Either that or its swap file doubles as a hibernation file.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[geekoid]

Some of thre AR stuff will be a huge memory hog, as well as some of the physics in newer games.

And who doesn't have more then 5 applications running?

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[geekoid]

actually, video editing and picture editing is common use now.

"Remember, most users don't do anything more than web browsing and word processing, with the occasional game of solitaire or minesweeper thrown in for kicks."

and video editing, and picture manipulation, and have several social networks, and watch TV.

All of that is become very common place.

But you keep thinking that users are a bunch of slack jawed yokels who don't know how to do nuthin' an dem der fancy computer-a-majiggers

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[HeronBlademaster]

I was including "several social networks" in "web browsing". Or is there some other type of social network I'm unaware of?

As for watching TV, that too could be put under "web browsing"; I don't know any non-power-user that has a TV tuner card in their computer.

I fail to see how categorizing the majority of use cases under "web browsing" or "word processing" is equivalent to calling people "a bunch of slack jawed yokels".

But even if they've got Hulu in one window and Facebook in another, there's no reason they need more than 4GB of RAM. My wife does this all the time on my "old" laptop (which has an effective 3.3GB of RAM installed) and it's quick and snappy, with very little RAM usage.

As for picture manipulation, yes, a lot of people do that; my wife uses Picasa to organize and touch up photos. But 4GB of RAM is excessive for that sort of thing.

I would argue that video editing doesn't fall under "most users", but even if it did, they'd be using Windows Movie Maker, which is far from high-quality; 4GB is excessive there, too.

Anyway, my point wasn't "people only need 512MB of RAM", my point was that "people don't currently need more than 4GB of RAM", which was Monkeedude1212's assertion.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

I do picture editing, video editing, watch TV (hell I even have 4 tuners in my machine), run visual studio and I have 4GB of ram and generally it doesn't come close to being consumed by those tasks.The thing is while one person may do all those things they don't do them at the same time. Anyone that is telling you that you need more than that for those tasks unless you are doing them at a very professional level is full of shit. I also have

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[Pentium100]

Except Windows uses the swap file differently. My system currently has 3.25GB of usable RAM, ~1GB of which is used for "system cache", ~1GB is free, but Windows still use ~640MB of the 1.5GB swap file.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

How about 64 GB in one memory module? Sorry, it's only DDR2.

http://www.buy.com/prod/hp-64gb-ddr2-sdram-memory-module-64gb-8-x-8gb-667mhz-ddr2-667-pc2-5300/q/loc/101/208453675.html

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

i do computer animation and while rendering i'm using every bit of my 8gb of ram. if i could afford a computer with 64gb of ram i would buy it in a second. there's no such thing as too much ram.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[BikeHelmet]

You're forgetting something.

When XP came out, the average computer had ~256MB of RAM in it. (maybe less) Most games consumed less than that.

Now that Win7 is coming out, the average computer has 2GB of RAM in it. (maybe 4GB) Most games consume close to 2GB.

How many people are going to install 32bit Win7, or receive a 32bit Win7 computer? It seems rather ludicrous setting the limit right at the edge of what is currently being used, don't you think? 256MB -> 4GB was plenty of upgrade room, but with a 4GB cap 32bit Win7 will be obsolete in 2010.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[daveime]

I think the majority here would say it's *already* obsolete. Let's be honest, it's Vista with (most of) the glitches worked out and a different jingle on startup and shutdown.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[adolf]

As long as we're being honest...

I have run Vista 32-bit since a couple of months after its release, at that time on an old laptop maxed with a couple of gigs of RAM. It always worked fine.

A year or so ago, I got a proper, new desktop machine (quad-core, SLI, blah-blah-blah). It came with Vista 32-bit. Later, I installed 64-bit. Both have worked fine.

The old laptop is currently running Windows 7 32-bit RTM. It works fine, too.

I'm not sure what glitches you're referring to. The old laptop was always happier with Vista and/or 7 than it ever was with XP Pro.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[drsmithy]

My system currently has 3.25GB of usable RAM, ~1GB of which is used for "system cache", ~1GB is free, but Windows still use ~640MB of the 1.5GB swap file.

This does not necessarily mean that 640MB of data is _only_ in the pagefile.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[drsmithy]

However, could we agree that a good chunk could use 10GB?

No. I play games and typically have >10 apps running at once (and one of those - Firefox - typically chewing up 500MB+ of RAM on its own) and 4GB is more than enough.

I'd be amazed if most users could tell the difference between even 2GB and 3GB of RAM, let alone 3GB and 10GB.

Re:server hardware vs desktop hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf? 4GB limit has to do with 32bit addressing and nothing to do with how many memory slots the motherboard has, the price of ram in the past or the price of tea in china. You might also be interested to know that your 32bit OS can't give all of that 4GB ram to a process (usually 2GB limit, YMMV). You might be interested in learning about PAE which is a nasty* hack to get around this limit. There's some good and bad info in this thread, read some and you might learn something.

*anyone who thinks PAE isn't a nasty hack loves pain or doesn't have to program for it.

I didn't ...

[SlashDev]

.. read the article, and for good reason. I want to make sure, that the frontpage article is accurate enough. Pardon my French, by how can you access RAM above 4GB, if you are running a 32-bit OS? I'm not tech savvy, how would can code access memory it can't see?

Re:I didn't ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Memory paging via PAE, I'd expect.

Re:I didn't ...

[maxume]

It's already mentioned repeatedly in the comments, but the answer is PAE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Re:I didn't ...

[FrankSchwab]

Google is your friend. Use it.

Re:I didn't ...

[kigrwik]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Each process addresses at most 4GB of data (or is it limited by most OSes to 2GB ?), but the whole OS can address more (with the proper hardware support, which has been standard since ... long ago, I don't remember).

Re:I didn't ...

[Mr. Shiny And New]

The Intel Xeon processors introduced a mode called PAE that increases pointer size to 36 bits. This allows the OS kernel to access more than 4GB of ram. Individual processes typically can not access this RAM directly but the OS and CPU handle this using hardware and virtual memory.

The Slashdot post is typically alarmist in claiming that there is an MS conspiracy afoot when in fact it's that PAE causes problems for countless drivers that are used on consumer computers but aren't used on servers. Servers have a much smaller range of hardware and the hardware and drivers are tested for PAE. Your desktop was not tested for PAE. So Microsoft disables the feature because you probably don't need it and it probably won't work anyway. If you know what you are doing you can get a Server OS and make it work.

Now, you say, "Gee, it's 2009! Who's Microsoft to say I don't need 4GB of RAM?" Well, XP is 8 years old and that is when this limitation was introduced. And your consumer version of Vista or 7 will work fine with 4GB if you get the 64-bit version. So everyone can calm down and pick the right OS for the job instead of whining about the sky falling.

Re:I didn't ...

[jpmorgan]

A processor running in 32-bit mode uses 32-bit values for virtual addressing. However, the processor uses 36-bit physical addressing when talking to RAM. The OS has a mechanism to assign any virtual pages in the 32-bit address space to any physical page in the 36-bit physical address space. Now, normal programs don't have more than 3GB of virtual address space to use, so if you have 64GB of RAM installed, each process can only see a fraction of the total memory available. However there are APIs since Win2K days which allow software to access memory outside of their 3GB user address space. Not commonly used outside of software like database servers, and nobody really cares anymore since the release of 64-bit versions.

Re:I didn't ...

[An ominous Cow art]

This is all disturbingly reminiscent of the old extended/expanded/high/upper memory horrors of the MSDOS days... I hope I don't start having the nightmares again after reading that article :-).

Re:I didn't ...

[rudy_wayne]

Pardon my French, by how can you access RAM above 4GB, if you are running a 32-bit OS?

How can a 16 bit OS address 1 Meg of RAM when 2^16 is only 64k? Read the article. It's interesting.

Re:I didn't ...

[maxume]

Just go 64 bit.

Really, I'm sure that designers at least considered being able to easily bank ram back when they were working on the 386, but for consumer systems, no way would it have made sense. Even if you could have figured out a way to wire it all together (in a consumer system), just buying 1 GB of memory in the late 1980s would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so this isn't quite as shortsighted as the DOS memory limit.

Re:I didn't ...

[Alzheimers]

I had those nightmares too, until I discovered this little secret.

Re:I didn't ...

[geekoid]

If only they linked to an article that explains that~

dumbass.

Re:I didn't ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The article is actually excellent: clearly written and technically completely correct, as far as I can judge.

how can you access RAM above 4GB, if you are running a 32-bit OS?

Because memory on modern operating systems is accessed only indirectly. Every process has access to up to 4 GB of logical memory that is mapped onto physical memory by a Memory Management Unit (MMU) which is part of the CPU. The MMU can access physical memory beyond the 4 GB boundary through a technique called Physical Address Extensions (PAE). Windows enables PAE by default because it is a prerequisite for enabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP) which is a security feature in modern processors and operating systems, and with PAE enabled there should be no reason why Windows wouldn't be able to use memory beyond the 4 GB boundary, in theory. In practice, it appears they limit memory to 4 GB for licensing reasons, although I don't understand why they would: 32-bit and 64-bit version of Windows cost the same, so they can't upsell you a 64-bit edition at increased cost.

(Note that even with PAE each process can only address up to 4 GB of memory and on Windows 1 or 2 GB of that is reserved for the kernel, but you can still make practical use of extra memory because if you run multiple programs that use a lot of memory, the total memory in use can be much more than the 2 or 3 GB limit that applies to each process individually.)

Re:I didn't ...

[BenoitRen]

Now, you say, "Gee, it's 2009! Who's Microsoft to say I don't need 4GB of RAM?" Well, XP is 8 years old and that is when this limitation was introduced.

You conveniently forget to answer the question of "Then why didn't they remove it for Vista?".

Re:I didn't ...

[shutdown -p now]

And here is the reference for PAE causing problems for many common drivers, straight from Microsoft itself.

This isn't to say that Windows doesn't have some limits that are purely marketing-driven - the memory limits for Windows Server line are that, for example (there's no technical reason as to why Enterprise edition can address more memory than Standard) - and the blog post I've linked to faithfully describes them as such. But the 4Gb limit in client OSes isn't one of them.

Re:I didn't ...

[mikael]

They used virtual memory mapping to map blocks of memory in the 64 Gbyte range into 32-bit 4 GByte range. Since the 32-bit CPU is already managing virtual memory, caching and paging, it is not too difficult to add a couple more address bits to the memory mapper. Every thread context still sees a 32-bit memory space.

Physical Address Extension

Re:I didn't ...

[Mr. Shiny And New]

They didn't remove it because the 32-bit driver situation is not improved, and with Vista the official way to access 4GB of RAM on a desktop is to use the 64-bit OS. Seems fairly obvious.

PAE? Nothing to see...

[Sits]

This sounds like more PAE shenanigans. Using PAE on 32 bit Windows has already been well covered by The Old New Thing.

Re:PAE? Nothing to see...

[EkriirkE]

Notrly. PAE is already enabled by default these days anyway (due to NX support), so you'd think it'd be a non-issue. No, there is a license check that the article describes and a quick NOP patch to bypass said check to tell windows to not limit memory.

Silly me...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Foolishing believing that you could only address 4GB with 32-bits... It's all a Microsoft conspiracy !

Re:Silly me...

[Icegryphon]

Only problem is since the Pentium Pro days to today it has been 36bits, AH-HA!

Great Article!

[Anonymous Coward]

No ads, all on one page, plenty of technical analysis and rigor. It was very relevant a pleasure to read.

I thought..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. this was a very well documented decision that Microsoft made. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605 makes it abundantly clear that they stopped allowing access to > 4GB physical memory because they found a lot of the crappy consumer device drivers would crap out when they allowed that.

Sounds plausible to me and again it definitely is NOT an architectural limit simply based on the fact that 32-bit Windows Server 2003 does support >4GB RAM - the drivers for the server platforms happen to be written sanely.

Re:I thought..

[swilver]

Plausible my ass.

Windows 2003 is nothing more than Windows XP with some extra services bolted on. I can't even tell the difference between 2003 and XP, certainly not from a developer/gamer perspective (yes, I use it as a gaming platform).

This is just typical marketing bullshit where PAE is disabled to sell more expensive copies, just like creating Software Raids is disabled in XP, but if you happen to create the array in some other way, then it will suddenly happily use your raid without problems.

Re:I thought..

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even _read_ the article or what the OP wrote for that matter before going on a uninformed rant? Drivers for consumer hardware are badly written and fail horridly when handed addresses that fall beyond the 4GB range. Drivers for server versions have to be signed by Microsoft which require that they pass WHQL and which also means that they are required to deal with > 4GB physical addresses. Microsoft had to ignore > 4GB addresses on consumer OSes to allow the badly written drivers to function. And yes - even though XP and 2K3 look the same, they target different hardware - consumer desktops vs. Servers. Driver quality for both is day and night type difference.

Ram Disk?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about loading the unaddressable space as a RAM disk, then telling the operating system to use it as "Virtual Memmory"? I've seen a possible solution here, but have yet to try it myself.

Re:Ram Disk?

[ShooterNeo]

Still a hack. The performance benefits from that aren't great. Already, certain games (like Supreme Commander) need more than 3 gigabytes of RAM. Second, a lot of virtual memory only can cache things that your hard disk has read recently. It won't let you cache a file that hasn't been accessed since you booted. An Intel SSD would offer you a far better performance boost for your buck, since with an SSD all files on the device can be accessed rapidly with low latency.

Even a RAM disk offers only limited benefits over an SSD, and is not cost effective. I looked into RAM disks, and found that in order to get a decent amount of RAM onto a motherboard, you have to sacrifice processor speed and pay a LOT more. RAID 0 Intel SSDs coupled with a high end processor and a modest amount of RAM (8-12 gigs) gives more performance for the same cost. And you need a 64-bit version of Windows to make it all work. Personally, I still use 64-bit XP, but my next machine will be a Windows 7 box.

Re:Ram Disk?

[nabsltd]

I looked into RAM disks, and found that in order to get a decent amount of RAM onto a motherboard, you have to sacrifice processor speed and pay a LOT more.

Unless you are talking about more than about 24GB, there really isn't a major price increase for a motherboard that can handle that much RAM, and it's quite easy to run 3GHz+ on those motherboards.

For server boards with multiple CPU sockets, yeah, you'll pay through the nose if you want 64GB of RAM and processors faster than 2.6GHz.

Re:Ram Disk?

[ShooterNeo]

i7 is MUCH faster per core and overall than earlier CPU generations. If you have the budget to think about a RAM disk, you probably want plenty of CPU power as well. The benchmarks I looked at showed that even SSDs lift the hard disk bottleneck enough that the new bottleneck is your CPU. Especially with a RAM disk, your CPU is going to be the bottleneck...it might be able to read or write from the 'disk' at thousands of megabytes/second, but it has to process data as well.

Anyways, it's hard to get enough RAM on a motherboard, especially if you use i7. You have to buy the server version of the i7 chip and so on. You do want more than 24gb...I was looking into 48gb....because I wanted to copy over my entire system disk into RAM, so that everything would be instant. Alas, after looking at benchmarks and comparing it to the alternative of a mere $229 for an 80 GB Intel SSD, I ditched the idea.

Re:Ram Disk?

[Bert64]

Ahh, the old copy your OS to ram trick...
I used to do that on the Amiga, i had 18MB of ram and never managed to use it, even with 8MB of it being used as a ramdisk (RAD: not RAM:).

I still have that Amiga, and another one with 112MB...

Re:Ram Disk?

[ShooterNeo]

The Amiga could have 112 megabytes of memory? How did you even get that much RAM? I remember upgrading my 486 running Windows 3.1 from 8 to 16 megs of RAM, and thinking that was a huge boost. It was expensive, too...

Re:Ram Disk?

[Bert64]

It's an A4000 with a cyberstorm MK2 68060 card, which has 4 simm slots capable of holding 32mb modules, i have 3x 32mb and 1x 16mb fitted.
Then there is the 2mb of chip ram on the motherboard...
It's also possible to fit an additional 16Mb of ram on the motherboard, but that will be much slower than the memory on the cyberstorm board.

I believe the A4000 processor slot is limited to addressing 128Mb, and that there are processor cards for the A1200 system which support even more than this.

It's also theoretically) possible to add up to 512mb more ram to an A4000 using Zorro-3 cards, tho this will also be quite slow.

Re:Ram Disk?

[ShooterNeo]

What era are these RAM expander cards from? I'm just trying to put it into context, because DRAM was obscenely expensive during the 80s and early 90s.

Re:Ram Disk?

[Bert64]

You could get the FastLane SCSI card which also supported up to 256Mb of ram (http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/fastlane), and was made in 1993...
Theoretically the A4000/A3000 machines had 4 Zorro slots and the tower versions had more (7 i think?), but i seem to remember the Z3 bus not being able to address more than 512Mb.
The processors in the Amiga could theoretically address up to 4Gb in total, tho i've never seen anyone with anything close to that, most amiga users i knew had less than 64mb...

The only reason mine has so much is because i added to it later when the ram became worthless and was being thrown out... It had 34mb when i was still actively using it.

Re:Ram Disk?

[ShooterNeo]

Right. In 1993 I recall RAM was $50/megabyte.

Welcome to 2009

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about the PAE hackery the past? Can you even buy a new computer today that cannot at least address a 64-bit memory space? This article is like a decade too late if it ever had any salient point to make at all.

Heck even windows XP is available on 64-bit platforms!

Re:Welcome to 2009

[fast turtle]

Sorry but the Intel Atom is a 32bit only CPU. Also many of the low-end Intel CPU's (Celeron's and such) are also 32bit only. So Yes it's pretty damn easy to still get a 32bit only system.

Just download and install 64bit

[Anonymous Coward]

It is free to upgrade 32bit vista to 64bit. It is same product, different installation media anyways. Same actication key works for both "versions". I am happy to have upgraded my old 32bit OEM vista home premium to 64 bit equivalent. Just get installation media somewhere (microsoft offers free download for non OEM customers). I have not encountered any problems because of this and I am mostly plaiyng games on vista.

license?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, using software wasn't an exclusive right protected by Copyright. Why must you get a license to change a setting in the software that is legitimately on your computer?

History repeats itself

[Cro Magnon]

Weren't 32-bit machines entry level before 1990? Yet, it took until MS shipped XP in 2001 before most consumers were running a 32-bit OS. We'll probably be running 64-bit Windows by 2030.

Re:History repeats itself

[IntlHarvester]

Weren't 32-bit machines entry level before 1990? Yet, it took until MS shipped XP in 2001 before most consumers were running a 32-bit OS. We'll probably be running 64-bit Windows by 2030.

Only if Microsoft followed the advice of Slashdot posters and kludged large memory PAE support into 32-bit Windows.

4GB should be a pretty standard baseline configuration by next year, which means MS is pretty much forcing them to go 64-bit.

Re:History repeats itself

[petermgreen]

Weren't 32-bit machines entry level before 1990? Yet, it took until MS shipped XP in 2001 before most consumers were running a 32-bit OS.
That depends whether you count 9x as a 32 bit os.

Re:History repeats itself

[petermgreen]

Only if Microsoft followed the advice of Slashdot posters and kludged large memory PAE support into 32-bit Windows.
As TFA and the server editions of windows demonstrates the support is already there it's just disabled. Still I doubt MS will enable it so that doen't matter much for the OEMs.

I've noticed a lot of OEMS shipping machines with 3GB by default. Presumablly this is because they don't want either complaints about machines that can't use all thier ram or to support 64 bit windows.

Re:History repeats itself

[IntlHarvester]

Right, it's really not a technical kludge. I just found it ironic someone was complaining about the slow 32-bit transition in a circumstance where MS is effectively forcing people to go to 64-bit.

Re:History repeats itself

[Jeremy Erwin]

Not really. Apple was still futzing about with 24 bit memory until 1991 or so. Linux was released the same year., Lots of 32 bit processors, lots of sub-32 bit memory managers.

Re:History repeats itself

[Bert64]

32bit machines were around for years before MS bothered supporting them...

Their first 32bit OS came out in 1993 or 1994, and wasn't targeted at consumers. The first 64bit cpus and associated software were already out by then.

It took MS another 10 years before they came out with a 64bit os... I was quite surprised to see there weren't any 128-bit cpus available yet.

Re:History repeats itself

[Bert64]

They have already kludged PAE support in...
All they need to do, is remove the arbitrary licensing restriction that stops people from using it. Did you not read the article? It also states that prior to xp/sp2 PAE support was available by default and it was possible to use more than 4gb in a 32bit system.

Re:History repeats itself

[alexandre_ganso]

What was Microsoft shipping when the 386 came out? MS-DOS 3.1? Windows 1.0?

Another kdawson special...

[zjbs14]

Why is /. greenlighting yet another article just for the sake of MS-bashing? Other posters have already pointed out the remaining process memory limits and consumer driver issues that make this a non-starter technically. Not to mention that there's not much (any?) consumer-level 32-bit hardware that has BIOS/Northbridge support for more than 4GB of RAM. Since the 64-bit versions don't cost any more, who cares?

But this guy is saying that Microsoft is doing something "illegal" because he was able to hack his system and enable PAE, even though MS charges extra for that in their server OSes. Is it "illegal" for Ford to sell me a car that's computer governed to 105 MPH even though the engine can get it up over 130? Can I complain to the FTC if I chip the car to remove the limit and then destroy the transmission?

Re:Another kdawson special...

[MrMista_B]

You must be new here. Welcome to your very first visit to Slashdot!

Enjoy your stay!

Re:Another kdawson special...

[BenoitRen]

Why is /. greenlighting yet another article just for the sake of MS-bashing? Other posters have already pointed out the remaining process memory limits and consumer driver issues that make this a non-starter technically.

I'd think because far too many people still assume that it's an architectural limit, when it's not.

Is it "illegal" for Ford to sell me a car that's computer governed to 105 MPH even though the engine can get it up over 130? Can I complain to the FTC if I chip the car to remove the limit and then destroy the transmission?

This is a bad analogy, as restricting someone from addressing over 4 GB of RAM is not a legal issue.

Re:Another kdawson special...

[zjbs14]

This is a bad analogy, as restricting someone from addressing over 4 GB of RAM is not a legal issue.

That was my point. But the guy who wrote the article is claiming that it's some huge conspiracy.

From TFA: (emphasis mine)

It is an abuse that consumers should not have to tolerate. Someone with authority over Microsoft ought investigate whether Microsoftâ(TM)s descriptions of 32-bit Windows Vista as being incapable of using memory above 4GB are misleading or illegal.

Re:Another kdawson special...

[BikeHelmet]

Why is /. greenlighting yet another article just for the sake of MS-bashing? Other posters have already pointed out the remaining process memory limits and consumer driver issues that make this a non-starter technically. Not to mention that there's not much (any?) consumer-level 32-bit hardware that has BIOS/Northbridge support for more than 4GB of RAM. Since the 64-bit versions don't cost any more, who cares?

The reason(as he explains) is that Microsoft used to allow more than 4GB of RAM before XP SP2, then they added the limitation. The majority of hardware released in the past 10 years will support > 4GB addressing ranges.

I actually have an old nForce 2 board that claims to support 2GB sticks. (4x2GB = 8GB) It has no 64bit drivers, which means it had to be designed for PAE usage, before the 4GB cap was implemented.

But this guy is saying that Microsoft is doing something "illegal" because he was able to hack his system and enable PAE, even though MS charges extra for that in their server OSes. Is it "illegal" for Ford to sell me a car that's computer governed to 105 MPH even though the engine can get it up over 130? Can I complain to the FTC if I chip the car to remove the limit and then destroy the transmission?

It's not illegal, and I agree that they can do what they want, including putting an artificial limitation in their software to spur sales. Many other companies(Apple, IBM, etc.) have done it too. With old IBM mainframes, couldn't you just flip a switch to get a RAM upgrade? ;)

It's their right, and their choice, but there's no harm letting them bask in the fallout.

Re:Another kdawson special...

[Arathon]

Having actually RTFA (I know, I know -- "what?!?"), I felt like it was a pretty fair assessment of the situation. Particularly, I felt like the emphasis was on the disingenuousness of Microsoft's claims that 32-bit systems could not support >4GB of memory (not on the possibilities of illegality). Further, your analogy is faulty in multiple ways, because Ford advertises the car as having a rev-limiter and speed-limiter, and advertises these things as being safety features. Microsoft, so far as I can tell, is not being upfront about its market segmentation, and is attempting to hide behind a wall of misinformation about 32-bit systems.

I've seen plenty of pointless Microsoft-bashing articles here at Slashdot. This doesn't seem like one of them. I'm not ashamed to say that I learned a lot from it, and that I wasn't previously aware of the details surrounding PAE (things I never would have discovered unless they were highlighted on a tech-news digest site like Slashdot, since I don't regularly peruse websites dealing with Windows-specific kernel research).

Re:Another kdawson special...

[greenreaper]

Not sure what you're running, but I have a bog-standard Dell and this fix works fine for me. YMMD, but I think most chipsets nowadays support 4GB. Especially the ones that can, you know, plug 4GB into them. Linux uses it, after all. Your car is governed to keep you driving at a sane speed. Wanting to use all the memory that you purchased is not insane.

Re:Another kdawson special...

[BenoitRen]

The way I read it, is that misleading product descriptions are illegal.

Re:Another kdawson special...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the 64-bit versions don't cost any more, who cares?

The software doesn't cost more, but replacing the hardware to be able to install it definitely does.

Re:Another kdawson special...

[BeanThere]

But this guy is saying that Microsoft is doing something "illegal" because he was able to hack his system and enable PAE

I RTA and I missed the part where he says it's illegal. Regardless of whether or not it is legal, he is more than welcome to (a) complain if he doesn't like it and (b) inform other consumers via articles like this of the facts (i.e. that it's less of a technical limitation, as is often claimed, and more of an arbitrary licensing one). I don't see what your problem is, frankly.

Re:Another kdawson special...

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point that most 32-bit consumer hardware won't support more than 4GB anyway, so most people with more than 4G will have 64-bit hardware. So, what replacing hardware?

Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

PAE is a shitty hack and should no tbe used by anyone. Use a 64-bit OS.

MS is right to kill it in licensing. Servers that are stuck in 32-bit land for some reason may need more memory, PAE is a necessary evil.
Desktop users simply can't be supported because of all the shitty drivers out there that assume a 4 GB upper bound.

Re:Duh

[Champion3]

If you're using DEP (a.k.a. the NX bit), you need PAE turned on anyway. The NX bit lives in PAE page table entries.

Can I just change a registry entry?

[filesiteguy]

I didn't see it in the article - and got sidelined by the whole PAE thing - but I seem to remember changing my Windows NT 4.0 Workstation to NT 4.0 Server by simply loading the HKLM hive (from another machine) and changing one value.

Reading further.... ...oh yes: Kernel-WindowsMaxMemAllowedx86

Okay.

Vista = Dog-shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I am certainly not a Vista fanboi, I would like to say that once I got it properly configured, it has been running very smoothly since the beginning of the year. It boots in seconds, does everything I need it to do, and is snappy as I've ever hoped it to be.

64-bit Vista Ultimate SP1 on a 4.2 Ghz Core Duo (OC'd) with 8 Gb ram and 1 Gb Nvidia card. If you have an older machine, I wouldnt suggest Vista in the slightest, but with modern hardware and the proper configuration (Yes, I still use Aero), it runs well. Well enough that I am happier with it than I was my old 32-bit XP machine.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[Anonymous Coward]

is more of a licensing preference then an architectural limit

So it's a licensing preference, followed by an architectural limit? If so, how is this a story?

Read the article: Physical Address Extension (PAE) can access up to 64 GB of RAM.
Windows Server 2008 (32 bit) can access up to 64 GB of RAM.
The exact same PAE in Windows Vista (32 bit) is artificially limited to 4 GB.
Microsoft is artificially limiting the 32 bit version of their software to access only 3.2 GB of memory in order to sell the 64 bit version, when both can actually access up to 64 GB of RAM.
Nothing new - business as usual - "What is good for Microsoft is good for (corporate) America!"

On 32 bit WinXP, you can't even use 4 GB

[rduke15]

Even 4GB is too much for 32 bit WinXP. The OS will only let any app. use a maximum of 2 GB.

Unless you enable the /3GB switch in boot.ini, which leads to other problems: your registry system hive must now remain smaller than 12 MB.

Re:On 32 bit WinXP, you can't even use 4 GB

[geekoid]

2GB per APP. not total.

Re:On 32 bit WinXP, you can't even use 4 GB

[BitZtream]

The article you link to for the whole 12MB thing is a scam, sorry.

Re:On 32 bit WinXP, you can't even use 4 GB

[rduke15]

The article you link to for the whole 12MB thing is a scam, sorry.

Why? What do you mean?

I came across that article because I had that exact problem. I needed the /3GB switch for a particular app (Avid), and suddenly I couldn't connect new external hard disks, and eventually couldn't boot the machine in that /3GB mode. Reducing the size of the system hive to under 12 MB. fixed the problem.

You lack any imagination

[egr]

I say no more

So it's a...

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's a licensing preference first, and -then- it's an architectural limit?

Interesting.

Conspiracy Theorist

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading through many of the many other pages on geoffchappell.com I can't help but feel he's one of the ones whipping the horses at the front of the anti-competitive & monopoly bandwagon.

Yes, we all know Microsoft is convicted monopolist, but sheesh, his website makes me want to break out my tin foil hat with all of his conspiracies!

And for the record, I know about PAE in 32-bit systems, and so do MS; and we both seem to agree it's total crap and should be hidden from the everyday user.

This is common with proprietary software

[JoeBuck]

There are any number of expensive software products where features are licensed separately, and the only different between Fubar Basic and Advanced Fubar Enterprise is a license key. The basic product has the same binary, with some features disabled. It should be no surprise that Microsoft does this.

It's all about testing and support

[drdrgivemethenews]

I work for a technology company and Microsoft partner that routinely does these same shenanigans. It's about testing. It costs a lot of money to put together larger systems and test them rigorously (our testing cycle is close to a year long).

It costs even more money to support said larger systems. When a customer with a large system has an outage, we have to reproduce the problem internally to figure out how to fix it. That may involve a lot of expensive equipment on top of the people time to set it up, configure it, load it, etc.

Our licensing and support fees are structured accordingly.

WinXP 64x

[yoshi_mon]

While XP x64 is dated I'm not sure I understand all the hate I see for it. I mean beyond the normal MS hate. (Oh and I hate MS too, got my card stamped at last weeks meeting. Hail brothers!)

As far as it goes thou on my Win desktop that I have I've been running XP x64 for a while now and it does just fine. Including games. And as a kicker it does it all with no swap file. Never even bitches about it unless the OS actually starts to run out of memory. Which I think has happened a grand total of once when I had like 4x Firefoxes open as well as a number of other things.

Until Win7 is polished I going to stick with XP x64 for my Windows machine.

Re:WinXP 64x

[BenoitRen]

Windows XP 64-Bit has little driver support. Especially compared to 32-Bit. That's why people don't like it.

Windows XP

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 4gb installed on my Windows XP home SP3, yet, it only sees 2.49GB. It'd be nice if Microsoft could let itself see all the resources the computer can offer...

Demand curve pricing

[goombah99]

Just like that airplane seat, hotel room, rental car, theater ticket, etc... the same thing is sold for different prices according to willingness to pay. Just like senior discounts.

It's econ 101. demand curve pricing. if the demand versus price curve is actually curved with a long tale then maximum profit is achieved when a company is able to segregate consumers by willingness to pay. Your revenue is the are under the curve. and single price just gets the area of the larges rectangle you can place under the curve.

Econ 201: in second term economics we learn that the price demand curve is not actually a single curve but is a family of curves parameterized by the total number of units manufactured. So as the company is able to sell things at different prices to more people the entire curve shifts down, making it either cheaper for everyone, or mor profitable for the company depending who gets the benefit of the increased production.

even though it's galling to know the product you bought is just a dumbed down version of a beter one at no difference in manufacturing costs it may well be much cheaper than it would have been had they sold one thing at one price.

Of course it may be that your customers hate this. a few companies like Apple and Saturn use a more price fix model precisely because it fits their style of minimizing aggravation. But even they have college student or military discounts.

Re:Demand curve pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

"if the demand versus price curve is actually curved with a long tale"

War and peace?

Re:Demand curve pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

or mor profitable for the company depending who gets the benefit of the increased production.

For all "intellectual property", where unit cost of production is close to zero, the customer usually gets zero benefit when the company engages in price fixing. It should be illegal.

I understand what you're saying but you, and most economists, are living in fantasy-land if you think that applies to "intellectual property". Vendors always create "cheaper option"'s with reduced value so that their is no net benefit to the consumer. Monopolies in particular cripple their products so that the net value to the consumer is only marginally above zero.

That's the major problem with "intellectual property" in general - "IP" is such a fuzzy concept it's just too easy for vendors to market manipulate with no benefit to the consumer - it's all of benefit to the vendor only.

it may well be much cheaper than it would have been had they sold one thing at one price.

Rarely actually happens with "intellectual property". It's total market failure - if the buyer of the identical, cheaper version cannot on-sell to any other possible customer then it's not a free market.

Econ 301: Customers get pissed with blatant marketer manipulators. Pissed customers often become ex-customers and advise their friends to do the same.

Re:Demand curve pricing

[BeanThere]

And contrary to popular opinion, demand curve pricing isn't necessarily "evil"; in fact, many businesses (software and otherwise) wouldn't be able to afford to produce the product you buy at all if they didn't do it .. i.e. it's not just about "maximizing profit" per se - the very business model often depends on it. And it's better to have a product than none at all.

your post, 15 years ago

[geekoid]

Many server motherboards have more then 4 RAM slots. Many desktop motherboards have 6 RAM slots. But it is not uncommon for server motherboards to have 12 or more RAM slots. Can one get 64 MB of RAM with 6 RAM slots? Sure, we can even do it with 4 RAM slots if you can get 16 MB RAM modules. Most people do not do that. And most regular people have no need for 32MB or 64MB of RAM in their desktop. Win 3.11 jokes aside, 64MB of RAM should really be in the for servers not desktops.

Mods on crack

[Tridus]

How is this possibly a troll? XP 64 IS terrible, Microsoft didn't even recommend its use outside of certain professional environments.

Re:Mods on crack

[CannonballHead]

Probably because I dared to say anything good about Vista.

XP x64 was indeed awful, not recommended by anyone I knew, etc. I ran it just to try it. Driver issues (even "supported" drivers) weren't very rare. Plus, the system's disk IO eventually almost ground to a halt. I never did find out why, but it's only happened in XP x64 and it only showed up after about a month of using it.

Re:Mods on crack

[petermgreen]

In what way is it terrible? Driver availibility isn't brilliant and the lack of a netware client is annoying but other than that I haven't noticed any real problems with it.

Re:Mods on crack

[kkwst2]

What is your justification that XP64 is "awful"? I've been running it for a couple years and haven't had problems. I mostly run computer modeling applications on it, but I've installed many other more mainstream things without a hitch. I don't recall running into any compatibility issues. I think there were driver issues in the early days of XP-64, but that was true of Vista too.

My new workstation is going to be Vista-64, but not because I had any problems with XP64.

I don't use the 64-bit IE at all. In fact I only use IE for some intranet sites that require it. Why use IE-64 at all. I've never needed to address more than 4GB with my web browser. I find no compelling reason to use 64-bit IE.

Re:Mods on crack

[Anonymous Coward]

if you mean it copied files slow
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920739

Re:Mods on crack

[CannonballHead]

No, I mean any IO. Even just I, without O. As in, running a program from disk...

Re:Mods on crack

[CannonballHead]

Mostly personal experience. It worked pretty well for about a month. Things started degrading from there - even though I was not installing oodles of software and smilie packs, of course.

I also ran into issues with software not running very well in 32 bit mode... i.e., "unsupported OS" being complained about by software installers. Of course, that's the software's problem, but XP's 32 bit emulation didn't work terribly well, it would seem.

All in all, XP x64 really felt like a "hack" to XP. Which, as I understand it, it basically was. It didn't seem to be particularly stable, either, and would crash a bit more often than XP.

I know I'm talking fairly generically - I haven't run it in about 4 years, so... :) I went back to 32 bit XP though, before going to Vista x64 after getting more than 4gb of RAM.

The loss is all microsoft's

[u19925]

The loss is all microsoft's. My company uses Cisco VPN dialer which works on 32 bit Vista but not 64 bit. Year and a half ago, unknowingly, I purchased a new PC with 4 GB RAM and had to return it. I am back to my old PC which already has 2 GB RAM. I am in no mood to buy a new machine if it comes with memory limit which is only 50% more than my 7 year old PC. I will purchase a new PC when my company supports 64 bit Windows (At this point, I am not prepared to totally ditch windows. Too much legacy stuff). If it supported more RAM, I would have purchased a PC 18 months ago and would have been ready to upgrade to Windows-7.

Re:The loss is all microsoft's

[IvyMike]

I too use the Cisco VPN software. It's not too bad to work around if you have a spare copy of XP.

Install VirtualPC on the 64-bit OS, and then install a spare copy of 32-bit XP into a virtual machine. Install the Cisco VPN software on that. Works like a charm, and I kind of like the fact that I've got another firewall between my home machine and the company network.

Re:The loss is all microsoft's

[Monolith1]

My company uses Cisco VPN dialer which works on 32 bit Vista but not 64 bit.

I had a similar problem with my Vista64 4GB machine. I ended up deciding to do my day job inside a vm session running XP just so I can use the cisco vpn utility easily. It runs fine full screen over the top while I am working, and I can move the session between PC's for redundancy which is another bonus.

Re:The loss is all microsoft's

[u19925]

Yes, I know this solution, but I didn't have a spare copy of XP. I used Linux with VirtualBox, and it worked but it was too slow (as slow as my old box which was 5.5 years old then). Why would I buy a new box and a copy of XP only to get same performance as my existing box?

Re:The loss is all microsoft's

[Blakey Rat]

Cisco's VPN dialer is a piece of shit. It doesn't work if you have more than one network card, it doesn't work if you use ICS (which I guess requires more than one network card... so uh.) It has a godawful UI, gives mysterious error messages for no reason at all (especially on Mac.)

In short: I don't blame Microsoft for Cisco's software sucking shit, I blame Cisco. So should you.

Re:The loss is all microsoft's

[aXis100]

Get a Linksys WRT54GL, flash OpenWRT onto it and then install the VPNC package. Instant VPN router and works a treat.

I run off one all day long, and use my work VOIP / PBX phone through it.

Dorking with RAM....this is news?

[UttBuggly]

My first "PC" was an IBM 360. Submitted jobs by batch and waited minutes or hours for the job to get queued and run.

I could go on, but will summarize and say I've used and abused everything from a Sinclair kit to large mainframes.

I can't remember ever NOT screwing around to get more available memory. Heck, I never met a UNIX kernel I liked...with default settings, at least.

At one point in my career, I knew more about things like QEMM (Quarterdeck Extended Memory Manager) than any human should.

One time, I edited "mploader", the script for Microsoft MultiPlan (Excel's grandad), on a Xenix system to increase the available memory from 32K to 96K. Could have gone higher, but the total system RAM was only 768K. The CFO had run out of resources on a spreadsheet he was building.

The point is this; finding ways to get more memory started Day One. TFA is old news at best and a waste of...wait for it....memory!

Re:Dorking with RAM....this is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the last time you got close to any pussy was the day you were born.

Re:Dorking with RAM....this is news?

[petermgreen]

If you read to the end of TFA they tell you exactly how to remove the limits in 32 bit vista.

That this is possible is not surprising but it's still interesting that someone has actually done the detailed research and figured out how to enable it.

What i'm wondering is if it's possible to do something similar for XP SP2.

Ummm, no...do the math

[curmudgeous]

The 32-bit x86 CPUs can only access 2^32 bytes (4 GB) of physical memory. Windows and other OS's implemented work arounds like PAE (Physical Address Extension) which allowed the kernel to reserve part of physical RAM to use like a disk paging file. PAE worked, in a way, but the overhead of moving bits of memory from higher addresses to lower addresses (so the CPU could access the contents) and back was hardly worth the effort. Calling this a "licensing issue" is complete BS.

Re:Ummm, no...do the math

[nlawalker]

Sort of. It's not a "licensing issue" in that MS wants you to shell out for some kind of license to use more than 4GB on a 32-bit system - it's just that the license protection functions of the OS are what are used to prevent PAE from being enabled. The *reason* that MS disabled PAE is because a large number of 3rd party drivers are unreliable when used with PAE and > 4GB of memory.

Re:Ummm, no...do the math

[swilver]

Ehr, right...

It doesn't actually "move" data. The so-called 32-bit x86 CPU's that support PAE infact have a 36-bits address bus, allowing the CPU to address 64 GB of memory using memory mapping.

The memory is divided up into small blocks (usually 4 or 8 kB) called pages. Special tables are used to create a map of pages for each process. This map determines which physical page maps to which page in the process' address space. So page 0 in the process' address space can be any physical page you want it to be, determined by a translation table. The translation table contains 36-bit offsets which are used by the CPU to dynamically translate a page in the process' address space to the correct physical page. There's absolutely no copying involved.

This of course still limits the address space a process can see to 4 GB, but multiple processes can use more than 4 GB of RAM. The overhead is infact minimal. It's in fact a similar mechanism as is used to implement Swap space, if not the same mechanism.

Re:Ummm, no...do the math

[Lemming Mark]

I'm not sure what feature you have in mind (although I can think of some possibilities) but PAE doesn't work like a paging file. It also doesn't require you to move data around in memory so that the CPU can access it - PAE is a hardware feature and gives you the ability to address up to 64GB (if your chipset allows) of physical memory. You only have 32-bit virtual memory addresses, i.e. pointers. But there are 36-bit physical addresses at the hardware level. Because you still have a 4GB virtual address space, so you can't address the full 64GB *at once*. But the kernel can update the pagetables to map different portions of the physical RAM any time it wants, so you don't have to move the actual data about.

The 4GB virtual address space limits any given process (and the kernel) to a maximum of 4GB mapped memory at any given time but you can still use all the physical memory by running different processes in different parts of it, so it can still be useful as long as you didn't want to just run one *huge* process. If you're running scientific or database workloads you might *really* need a larger program address space, in which case you really do want 64-bit.

The main example of where you actually do need to copy stuff from low to high memory (and vice versa) is for supporting DMA to devices that can't address high memory. The CPU can always directly address any memory by creating a pagetable mapping appropriately. To compensate for a DMA device that can't access a given high memory page, the OS creates a temporary mapping, copies data somewhere the device can DMA it, lets the device do its thing, then copies the data back . That *is* ugly but 64-bit does not solve it either if your devices have this kind of limitation. An IOMMU can translate from the device's DMA addresses to real physical addresses, making it possible for even limited devices to DMA to any part of memory. That's the "proper" fix, short of having all devices support DMA to all of memory. IOMMUs are starting to appear more and more on x86 hardware, so hopefully this issue will start to resolve itself.

Anyhow, with respect to the current article, Windows *can* do PAE to support systems with >4GB physical memory, you're just not able to run single huge processes because there's still a limited virtual address space. But despite its PAE support, it deliberately limits you to 4G physical memory, unless you buy a more expensive license. This isn't that unusual a practice but it's still always a bit upsetting to realise that the OS is being intentionally broken for commercial reasons.

Re:Ummm, no...do the math

[curmudgeous]

Thanks for clarifying that. I have limited experience with Vista (just enough to know that it's a pile of crap) and haven't dug into Server 2008 enough to realize that PAE had been disabled. XP and Win2k3 are still my primary Windows environments.

Re:Ummm, no...do the math

[petermgreen]

Sort of. It's not a "licensing issue" in that MS wants you to shell out for some kind of license to use more than 4GB on a 32-bit system
Sure they do, it's called the enterprise or datacenter edition of windows server.

Like?

[Sycraft-fu]

Seriously, what apps don't run in 64-bit Windows? I ask because I run 64-bit Windows at home and at work, and part of what I do is check our apps for compatibility. Here is a list of some of the programs I've tested and verified work in 64-bit Windows. This is not a complete list, just off the top of my head:

Matlab 2008, HFSS 11, ADS 2008, VMWare 6.5, Visual Studio 2008, Firefox 3.5, Thunderbird 2, Office 2007, Adobe Audition 3, Sony Vegas 8, Geovision Multiview 8.3, Winamp 5, 7zip, Sonar 8, Play 1.2.5, Textpad 5.2, PerfectDisk 8, Adobe Acrobat 9, Adobe CS3, Eclipse 3.3.2, Xming 6.9, IMGBurn, Cadence 16.01, Mass Effect, World of Warcraft, Civ 4, Galatic Civilizations 2, Team Fortress 2, and so on.

In total I have probably tested over 300 programs of all different kinds that work. By work I don't mean "Run with errors," I mean that run like they did on a 32-bit system.

The 32-bit compatibility layer in Windows is extremely good. More or less any usermode 32-bit software seems to run, nor problems. The only compatibility issues I've run in to are:

1) Drivers. All drivers have to be 64-bit. In general, these days most companies have 64-bit drivers out. However if you have a piece of hardware that you need and it doesn't have 64-bit drivers then you are SOL.

2) Programs that make use of a kernel mode component. If you have something like a virus scanner or firewall that needs a kernel module installed, that module must be updated to 64-bit. There is no 32-bit code in a 64-bit kernel, no exceptions.

3) 16-bit programs. MS has stated there is no 16-bit compatibility layer in 64-bit Windows.

So seriously, what programs are you finding that don't work?

Re:Like?

[SilverEyes]

I run 64-bit Windows at ... work, and part of what I do is check our apps for compatibility...not a complete list, just off the top of my head:

Firefox 3.5, Thunderbird 2, Mass Effect, World of Warcraft, Civ 4, Galatic Civilizations 2, Team Fortress 2, and so on.

Please tell me that these were for work. Please also tell me where you work and if you're hiring...

Re:Like?

[Sycraft-fu]

No, unfortunately :D. The games I run at home. I just included some games that I play as an example of software that runs fine in 64-bit Windows. After all, gaming is a non-trivial part of many computer user's apps. If 64-bit Windows worked flawlessly with productivity apps but not at all with games, well that'd be a reason for some people to run 32-bit. However games work just fine.

Also we are not hiring. We have a hiring freeze and are laying people off. Crappy economy >.

Re:Like?

[Bert64]

Not all games work properly, many use drm schemes that require kernel level drivers, and some of the older games haven't had these kernel drivers ported to 64bit.

Ok but

[Sycraft-fu]

This isn't relevant to netbooks for two reasons:

1) The netbooks don't support more than 4GB of memory. As such trying to find a 32-bit hack to access more than 32-bits of memory isn't useful.

2) The netbooks don't support PAE, the hardware hack that is needed for more than 4GB of memory in 32-bit. Thus none of these hacks would work.

So if you are running a 32-bit netbook, fine, you have to run a 32-bit OS and cope with 4GB or less RAM. If you run a desktop that supports more than 4GB of RAM in hardware, it also supports 64-bit, run 64-bit.

Re:Ok but

[Bert64]

Not necessarily...
I have a Compaq ppro box that can take 8gb, not a 64bit cpu...
I also have a dual xeon (older 32bit xeon) that can support 8gb..

Surprised at the XP64 hating... Fixing installers

[(H)elix1]

Surprised at the XP64 hating out there. When it was first released, drivers were in rough shape. Today, I've found most of the motherboards and video cards I buy have Server 2003/XP64 support - that covers 99% of the drivers I normally bump into. Heck, I even got my laptop running XP64. That was a bit of a treasure hunt compared to the typical build, but still.

Anyhow, had a different point to bring up... There are a few games and apps that don't - but for the most part it just works. For those that don't, many cases it is just a brain dead installer. (Hey Apple iTunes developers, I'm looking at you!) Turns out you can fix an installer where the people did not think to test/support XP64 by modifying the MSI installer to not rule out a properly patched version of XP64.

Download Microsoft's Orca MSI editor. (Find it in this CAB, or google for it) Look for a "LaunchCondition" property, probably set to "VersionNT64>=600" and modify it to "VersionNT64>=501". Shazam! Very good chance it will just work - at least the installer will not stop you from trying to run it.

Some people (Apple) still need to update drivers, etc... but more often then not it works.
   

Ok...

[Sycraft-fu]

However these is the equivalent of the Rosetta emulator. Actually, there is far superior to the Rosetta emulator. It's called WOW64, Windows on Windows. It is a compatibility layer that allows 32-bit software to run on 64-bit Windows. It isn't an emulator, it is just a translation service. 32-bit apps run in their own 32-bit virtual space (per app) and the processor hops in to a 32-bit compatibility mode when executing them. WOW64 handles all translation calls to the 64-bit OS. Compatibility is essentially 100%, speed is 100%, and there's no extra stuff to load, the app runs side-by-side with 64-bit apps.

You can, and I (and many others) do run 64-bit systems with 32-bit apps on them with no problem. I don't even know or care which apps on my system are 32-bit. They all work just the same.

Re:Ok...

[tepples]

Actually, there is far superior to the Rosetta emulator. It's called WOW64, Windows on Windows.

WOW is World of Warcraft to everyone else.

It is a compatibility layer that allows 32-bit software to run on 64-bit Windows. It isn't an emulator, it is just a translation service.

True, but sanosuke001's suggested dropping the "legacy" x86 instruction decoder in future x86-64 CPUs. In such a case, 64-bit operating systems would need an emulator to run 32-bit apps.

I don't even know or care which apps on my system are 32-bit.

Hint 1: If you install an app, and a required driver fails to install, the driver is either 32-bit or homemade, and the app probably is too.

anyone remember EMS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oooh, my brain hurts.

This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

What im wondering is why this is news....we were using PAE like a year and a half ago....and to be perfectly honest the entire conversation is irrelevant, if your a guy who needs to use 4gb of ram or more, than chances are you know about the 32 bit limit and the first thing you did was get a 64 bit OS.

To be honest i dont even know why windows 7 has a 32bit option, theres no need for it anymore, 64 bit has very good backwards compatibility, and in a couple years, 32 bit OS will be useless.

Re:This is news?

[argent]

To be honest i dont even know why windows 7 has a 32bit option

Because not all computers have x86_64 support?

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[kabloom]

They should be selling the 64-bit version. They should be preinstalling the 64-bit version. People *shouldn't* be using the 32-bit version, becuase there's still a very real architectural limitation in the 32-bit version: a given process can only see 3 GB of memory, no matter how you set up your licensing.

The problem is

[Sycraft-fu]

That for an app to use more than 2GB of memory on a PAE enabled system, the app itself has to specially support and use AWE (address windowing extension). Only apps that are coded to do that can make sure of more than 2GB. Well those are extremely rare. MSSQL server is the only one I know of. Any other apps is still limited to 2GB.

No such problems on a 64-bit system. Each 32-bit app gets 4GB of virtual address space. That means normal apps can access 2GB of memory, any app flagged as large address aware can get 4GB of memory (programs like LaaTiDo can flag any app, though some will crash because of bad pointer math). Any 64-bit app will have access to as much physical memory as the system has, without any special coding.

Thus these days playing with PAE is silly. If you buy a desktop computer that supports more than 4GB, it also supports 64-bit. For that matter, if you buy a desktop computer period, it is almost impossible to get one that isn't 64-bit. So, if you need more memory, run 64-bit. If you don't, well then run whatever you like.

Please tell me that you're not an English teacher!

[Anonymous Coward]

Big pet peeve of mine; then vs. than.

I agree with the intent of what you wrote. However, please note the following:

- what you wrote constitutes an incomplete sentence;
- semicolons are for lists, commas are for correlation.

People have gotten so lazy in their pronunciation, that they cannot determine which word they are even using. ...sigh

The specific thought that you wished to convey is obfuscated due to the following:

- the use of the comma is inappropriate as it introduces an unnatural pause;
- "are even using" is a split infinitive;
- the use of the noun "pronunciation" is inappropriate in this context unless you were reviewing an audio clip of the post or made an odd leap in logic.

Now I will leave it to other grammar nazis to trash the grammar in my post.

Not much content to this story

[jasonwc]

I RTFA and I have to say, I think the author is attempting to find a conspiracy where none exists. If the author had searched MS's website for information on PAE, he would have soon learned why MS decided to remove PAE, and thus support for more than 4 GB of physical memory, from XP SP2.

Why this is a non-story:

1) MS removed PAE in XP SP2 because of incompatibility with 32 bit drivers and resulting instability issues.

XP did support PAE before SP2. However, Microsoft received complaints from users regarding compatibility and instability issues resulting from the use of 3rd party 32 bit drivers. Many users were getting BSODs. It was only then that MS chose to remove PAE from XP SP2.

This decision makes quite a bit of sense. Manufacturers were unlikely to update drivers to include PAE support because, at the time, 4GB+ of memory was very uncommon, and relegated to power users who had a specific need for large amounts of RAM. The situation has since changed due to the plummeting cost of RAM, Vista's need for greater memory resources, more demanding applications, and Superfetch, which allows users to make use of idle memory to preload commonly used applications. My own experiences on Vista x64 show that programs start up significantly faster than in XP due with Superfetch enabled.

Now that 64 bit drivers can be had for pretty much all modern hardware, there is no reason to use a hack like PAE to support more than 4 GB of RAM. Most machines sold by Dell, HP etc. now include 64 bit Vista if the machine has 4 GB of RAM, which is now becoming standard.

See below for MS's explanation of the removal of PAE from SP2.

Source: MS Website, "Operating Systems and PAE Support", June 14 2006 - http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx

Driver Issues Typically, device drivers must be modified in a number of small ways. Although the actual code changes may be small, they can be difficult. This is because when not using PAE memory addressing, it is possible for a device driver to assume that physical addresses and 32-bit virtual address limits are identical. PAE memory makes this assumption untrue.

Several assumptions and shortcuts that could previously be used safely do not apply. In general, these fall in to three categories:

Buffer alignment in code that allocates and aligns shared memory buffers must be modified so that it does not ignore the upper 32 bits of the physical address. Truncation of addresses information in the many locations this might be kept must be avoided. It is necessary to strictly segregate virtual and physical address references so DMA operations do not transfer information to or from random memory locations.

PAE mode can be enabled on Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1 and later versions of Windows to support hardware-enforced DEP. However, many device drivers designed for these systems may not have been tested on system configurations with PAE enabled. In order to limit the impact to device driver compatibility, changes to the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) were made to Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 Standard Edition to limit physical address space to 4 GB. Driver developers are encouraged to read about DEP.

2. Windows isn't trying to screw users over by purchasing a higher priced 64 bit version. Any retail version of Vista or Windows 7 comes with both the 32 and 64 bit installers. As others have mentioned, it's also possible to activate 64 bit Windows with a 32 bit OEM key.

3. PAE will not allow a single process to use more than 4 GB of RAM so a true 64 bit OS is still superior for programs that need large amounts of memory such as HD Video editing, editing of large images in Photoshop etc.

Re:Not much content to this story

[BitZtream]

Sigh ... wrong ... did you even read the article you linked too?

PAE is supported only on 32-bit versions of the Windows operating system; 64-bit versions of Windows do not support PAE. For information about device driver and system requirements for 64-bit versions of Windows, see 64-bit System Design. The Address Windowing Extension (AWE) API is supported on 32-bit systems. It is also supported on x64 systems for both native and Wow64 applications.
Although support for PAE memory is typically associated with support for more than 4 GB of RAM, PAE can be enabled on Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, and later 32-bit versions of Windows to support hardware-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP).

There is no PAE in 64 bit versions because it has no purpose

PAE will allow a single process to address more than 4GB of memory using AWE. Again, read the page you linked too.

Re:Not much content to this story

[jasonwc]

Sigh ... wrong ... did you even read the article you linked too?

PAE is supported only on 32-bit versions of the Windows operating system; 64-bit versions of Windows do not support PAE. For information about device driver and system requirements for 64-bit versions of Windows, see 64-bit System Design. The Address Windowing Extension (AWE) API is supported on 32-bit systems. It is also supported on x64 systems for both native and Wow64 applications.
Although support for PAE memory is typically associated with support for more than 4 GB of RAM, PAE can be enabled on Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, and later 32-bit versions of Windows to support hardware-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP).

There is no PAE in 64 bit versions because it has no purpose

PAE will allow a single process to address more than 4GB of memory using AWE. Again, read the page you linked too.

I'm not sure what you think our disagreement is based on. I clearly stated that PAE was only necessary for a 32 bit OS, and that a 64 bit OS has no need for such a hack. See below.

"Now that 64 bit drivers can be had for pretty much all modern hardware, there is no reason to use a hack like PAE to support more than 4 GB of RAM."

I'll defer to you on AWE.

Pester Microsoft

[QuietLagoon]

pester Microsoft for an upgrade of the license data or at least for a credible, detailed reasoning of its policy for licensing your use of your computer's memory.

.
Why should I have to beg Microsoft to be allowed to use my own computer hardware?

An OS has got to know its limitations!

[WoodstockJeff]

People *shouldn't* be using the 32-bit version, becuase there's still a very real architectural limitation in the 32-bit version: a given process can only see 3 GB of memory, no matter how you set up your licensing.

Whereas the 64-bit version only suffers from limitations on available component drivers...

Re:An OS has got to know its limitations!

[Barny]

And software support, ask Intuit if their latest software in the Quicken line of accounting and retail software will run in 64bit windows.

Re:An OS has got to know its limitations!

[nhytefall]

And why shouldn't people be using a 32-bit version of the OS?

What is interesting is that if you RTFA, you realize that the perceived architectural limit of 4GB is actually a fallacy. The only limit prohibiting the utilization of more than 4GB of RAM in Vista 32-bit AND XP 32-bit is the licensing limitation prohibiting PAE mode.

Re:An OS has got to know its limitations!

[smash]

Its really not that bad these days (has improved markedly since 2007 when i first started running 64 bit). yes, there is obscure stuff out there that is not 64 bit friendly (security/licensing dongles, cheap old shitty hardware), but for a typical home user desktop, its fine. 64 bit is snappier too.

Re:An OS has got to know its limitations!

[2short]

"ask Intuit if their latest software in the Quicken line of accounting and retail software will run in 64bit windows."

Done (at least for Quicken). They say yes. ( http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance/deluxe-money-management.jsp ; system requirements at the bottom)

Drivers might be an issue, but I've been running 64bit windows for a while now, and have yet to encounter a 32 bit application that knew or cared.

Re:An OS has got to know its limitations!

[Carewolf]

Why wouldn't it? AMD64 is backwards compatible with IA32. It is only kernel-drivers that has to be 64bit, and even then you are saved by WinNT's original microkernel architecture, so only high-performance drivers such as graphics needs to be 64bit. Vista in itself imposes more driver-rewrites that 64bit does.

Screenshots?

[HavocXphere]

Windows was switched from displays RAM installed to displaying RAM in use after the whole 4gb limit + GFX using addr space caused users to freak out. (Where is my missing RAM).

64bit

[Yaos]

Or you could just upgrade to 64bit hardware and software and stop trying to get around the limit with hacks that break things. Intel and AMD have been selling 64 bit processors for a long time now.

PAE =?= EMS

[BUL2294]

Simple question... Is PAE a reincarnation of LIM EMS, built into the CPU? (After all, the "I" in "LIM" stands for "Intel").

Re:PAE =?= EMS

[Lemming Mark]

PAE enlarges the page table entries to 64-bit (IIRC). On a 32-bit PAE system you can stuff 36 bits of physical address in there. To compensate for that, the page table has one more level, making it 3 levels high instead of the 2 that non-PAE 32-bit x86 uses. The root node of the page table is 4096 bytes, the size of an x86 page, however it only contains 4 entries. This is because the userspace code running on it still only gets a 4GB virtual address space.

So basically it's a slightly weird-looking extension of the original x86 page table format that can handle larger physical addresses. You end up being able to have >4GB physical memory but you can't have more than 4GB mapped in any process (or the kernel) at any given time. On Linux this usually means 3G address space per process, with the kernel having 1GB. The extra bits in the page table entries also allow support for the NX (no execute) extension.

What's EMS? ;-)

Re:PAE =?= EMS

[yuhong]

No, you are probably confusing PAE with AWE which was indeed similar to EMS.

In need of advice

[NXprime]

We have a first gen Heidelberg 9110 with Version 4 software ON THE PRINTER. Can't upgrade since each version upgrade (currently 7.0) costs $$$$ which is a waste of money for a printer that's near it's EOL. We have used the same Dell PC with Windows 2000 SP2 since 2000 when the company purchased both products. Vista 64 bit drivers currently are available for the 7.0 version PC driver only. Version 4 is good for 2000, maybe XP.

So where did we spend our money? On THREE 250ppm b&w printers and a brand new Dell Studio PC with Intel Core i7 920, 6gb of ram, and Windows Vista 64bit OS. The problem is that this is to spool large files over as quickly as possible using PCL drivers. Variable addressing data per page. Times a few million, you get the idea of the number crunching. Only thing is we have a USB key with a license code to send this over to the printers for one PC. Can't use the old PC without ripping out the $30,000 license key and placing it back in the old PC to send files to the Heidelberg. Not an option at this point. Would Version 4.0 Win 2000 drivers work on Vista 64 bit? Haha, no. We could try the 7.0 64bit PC drivers (independent of the 4.0 software on the printer), but not sure they're all that compatible. Or downgrade to Windows XP 32 bit. Now you start to see the problem? We would lose half the ram on the PC if we downgraded and so a software hack might be useful in our case. Printer spool sizes do go up to 2gb from time to time and cause headaches with each page spooled around 100mb each. We can't wait 10 minutes sending files over. Personally, backwards compatibility is a dead issue if we get rid of the Heidelberg soon. Thrown over Niagara Falls preferably. :)

So, would all 6gb be helpful in this case? Would the hack help us spool large files?

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[msclrhd]

In reality, how many people are actually going to have a single application that will need 3GB of memory. You need to be doing something like movie editing or sound recording to hit that limit.

Linux does not have the same limit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does.

32bit Linux is subject to the same address mathematics as any OS. What you meant to say was that Linux uses PAE better than Windows can, true but most end users have never heard of it and it is not installed by default.

In Linux land we now have 64bit flash, java etc - there is no reason to stick with 32bit any more and with 64bit you can use as much ram as your motherboard can address. Linux drivers by their nature are 32/64bit ambidextrous.

Re:Please tell me that you're not an English teach

[Mozk]

I'm not gonna trash the grammar in your post because I don't notice bad grammar unless it's obviously wrong or gets in the way of the meaning of the post, but there's nothing wrong with split infinitives. It's a nonexistant rule that English teachers—and the people they tell it to—spread.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[pankreas]

True but what about a ton of concurrent apps? I sometimes run 2 virtualbox vm's in the background while running the usual work email client, web apps on the host. I'll usually be consuming close to 3gb of memory in that scenario.

Barrow

[rossdee]

A small vehicle used to carry a load and pulled or pushed by hand.

I think that meaning (of the noun) makes more sense (when verbed) in this context.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[Pyrion]

Goes even further than that. A given process can only use 2GB of memory, no matter how you set up your licensing, no matter whether you're using a 32-bit or 64-bit Windows OS, if the developers were stupid enough to not compile it as large address-aware.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[complete loony]

But then there are companies like canon who have not released any drivers for 64-bit windows. If you default to 64-bit, you may get a number of angry customers.

4GB? I wish!

[Trogre]

For programs like MATLAB, the maximum amount of memory you can use for a session is more like 1GB under 32-bit windows. Funnily enough the same is not true for 64-bit Windows, or 32-bit Linux versions.

In Windows, one can invoke feature('memstats') to see just how much memory is available.

Just Recompile it

[npsimons]

Unfortunately, lots of Windows software won't run on 64-bit Windows XP.

What's the problem? Just grab the source and recompile it.

This worked for me (Vista SP2)

[greenreaper]

I made the patch to the kernel at (bytes 0x30C43A and 0x30C47B for SP2), signed with a test certificate, set the necessary bcdedit configuration, and rebooted. It works and I now have 4GB where I once had 3GB. Everything seems to be working so far. Kudos to TFA. I always wondered why I couldn't find a technical limitation in the Vista binaries.

Re:Please tell me that you're not an English teach

[yoyhed]

Semicolons are not simply "for lists". They are primarily used in place of a comma and conjunction for joining two complete sentences. When used in lists, semicolons aren't used after every item, as you did; they are used only if "compound items" in the list contain commas, in order to avoid confusion.

The Win 7 Preview At Walmart.com

[westlake]

We'll probably be running 64-bit Windows by 2030.

WalMart.com lists 37 Vista desktops with a free upgrade to Win 7. 25 are 64 bit. Windows 7 Tech Upgrade

HAL?

[smitty97]

Client versions of Win32 will enable PAE to get the NX bit, but the HAL will block access above 4GB.

"I'm sorry PAE, I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

There's a pedantic in every crowd.

[Anonymous Coward]

This thread, however, is a crowd of pedantics.

Re:There's a pedantic in every crowd.

[yoyhed]

I'm not usually a Grammar Nazi - it's just when I see Grammar Nazis making mistakes that I have to play their game.

The irony

[HeLLFiRe1151]

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

Re:The irony

[yuhong]

From an email sent to me by Geoff Chappell about this article: "That's going to cost me even more money for the ever-increasing bandwidth. Between Slashdot and Reddit, I had a month's bandwidth (16GB) drained in 8 hours yesterday. It's nice to have the site recognised, but in another way, it's no fun at all!"

Poorly supported?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what hardware your using... but all my devices have 64-bit drivers available.
I haven't had any problems using 64-bit XP.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[bored]

You are forgetting about AWE, random google hit about it. (http://blogs.technet.com/rob/archive/2008/05/15/windows-memory-and-sql-server.aspx)

It is all about the drivers

[fragMasterFlash]

If you are deploying Windows Server 2008 in a production environment you are going to take a long hard look at your total cost of ownership. Doing so you will likely come to the conclusion that paying a bit more upfront for hardware and drivers certified as server grade is a worthwhile investment. Joe Sixpack is going to buy the cheapest gaming rig he can find at Frys and grab whatever drivers he can get off the web. Writing a decent 64 bit driver stack for Windows is not the easiest thing in the world. MS is cognizant of this fact and it would appear they are heading off a massive influx of OCA bug reports by not allowing the rank and file of the world to live dangerously. I, for one, applaud such efforts.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[Yoozer]

With HD cameras becoming increasingly cheap and common, and recording your own music with software synthesizers and samplers (making music has never been cheaper), plus a large portion of the (affluent) population choosing to do both, this comment can be filed away in the same box the fictional "640 kb is enough for everyone" quote resides in.

People already complain about harddisks - when it says "1 TB" on the box and they can only use 931. What do you think they're going to say when their system is loaded up with 8 GB because the sticks are just so damn cheap and they can only see 3 GB?

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[someone1234]

Well, it happens. It depends on how much data you load into memory :)
Nothing requires to keep all of it in memory, you can always swap it out, even with movie editing or sound recording.
Sometimes you just don't want to.
Sometimes you designed your software to load everything, and it works for years.
Then suddenly, someone presents it with a 100 times larger dataset, and it would process it, except for this pesky 4G (2G?) limit.

64bit is the way

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole article is bull. Hacking over 4GB support with old DOS EMS type of stupid ways is no brainer. Just switch to 64bit OS. Practically every new computer (non-netbook or smartphone :P) supports 64bit OS.

64bit driver support is already good and when Windows 7 comes out it will become even better.

P.S. I have used 64bit Windows since Windows XP x64 Edition (based on w2k3srv) and even games worked with it and ran more stable than 32bit XP ever did!

I'm quite sure he's never tried

[Sycraft-fu]

After all, back in the days of 32-bit CPUs, boards that actually supported more than 4GB were extremely rare. High end server stuff only. By the time larger amounts of RAM became something the consumer could afford, well CPUs were 64-bit so it isn't an issue.

Today this is a complete non-issue with desktop PCs, or at least ought to be. Any desktop PC you can get your hands on that supports more than 4GB of RAM, also supports 64-bit. In fact I can't find ANY desktop PCs today that don't support 64-bit. So, if you need more RAM, run 64-bit. There is no reason to run 32-bit with PAE. It is slower, single processes don't get more memory, and 64-bit OSes are readily available. 64-bit apps also are sometimes faster due to the larger integers and more hardware registers in 64-bit mode. Even some that are heavily FP based (like Prime95) see a small improvement in 64-bit mode.

For Linux, just download the appropriate version. For Windows, if you don't have a 64-bit copy, just ask MS for one. They'll change your license to 64-bit and mail you the media for the cost of shipping.

I would wager that all the people bitching about this and/or claiming Linux doesn't have this problem have never tried or needed it. They likely all have desktops with 4GB or less RAM, since that is what is extremely common these days. Anyone who really does need more RAM will get a 64-bit OS, since that is a much better solution to the problem.

Re:I'm quite sure he's never tried

[kabloom]

I administer a machine that can take up to 12GB of RAM (we're trying now to decide whether to put more than 4GB in it), but doesn't support the lm flag (i.e. it only has a 32-bit processor). The machine is over 4 years old.

Nothing to see, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this story even newsworthy?

Is it because most computer users are fucking retarded as fuck and don't know shit about shit?

Windows has a hardware abstraction layer, or HAL. Your computer's manufacturer provides your HAL. The HAL shipped in 99% of windows xp/vista systems allows only 4 gig of ram to be used. As noted in the article, this is a licensing issue. If a vendor wanted to sell you a vista workstation with 64 gig of ram, they could, as long as they work with microsoft on the licence and on the HAL.

Heres a good one: Im typing this on a dell latitude laptop. The HAL in the XP install is apparently capable of > 4 gig of memory, by way of PAE. But it's a moot point, as the machine now runs fedora.

The crux of the 4 gig issue is shitty and old drivers written by chimps and people with down syndrome. Put one of these badly written binary blobs into a PAE enabled system, and shit can (and does) go wrong.

Quite frankly, if you need to address > 4 gig of ram, you are probably doing something more than facebook/msn/email/flikr, and you should buy hardware which can address your requirements. Such as windows server 64 bit, or linux 32 bit PAE, or linux 64 bit.

Honestly, I don't know why this is even newsworthy. It's definetly not new. And isn't really worthy. I learnt this stuff back in the NT 3.5/4 days, and not much has changed under the hood in this regard.

Oh right, It just dawned on me. You all use pirated versions of XP and vista which don't come from any specific hardware manufacturer. LRN2!EATCOCKFGTS

Re:Nothing to see, move along

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a consumer rights issue. ms hasn't disclosed the fact that they are limiting your hardware. TFA makes clear that this is not based in a technical problem, and in fact shows a long history of this problem, when it had been technical, and where ms decided to migrate it to a licensing issue, in other words, it's not a technical problem, and we should wonder about the gesture made by retaining this "problem" with the licensing mechanism, rather than allowing it to disappear.

Furthermore, the industry as a whole is complicit, as evident by the fact an OEM will sell you 8GB of ram, along with an OS without PAE licensing and there will be no discussion usually about how to make use of 5/8ths of that purchase. That's a consumer rights issue.

as for being newsworthy, the bottom of TFA reads: This page was created on 27th January 2009, so, no it might have been then, but it's old news now..... ymmv

Can't see more than 2GB on my Asus mobo...

[yourtallness]

Despite having 4GB of Corsair memory installed, I can't get Win XP Pro 32bit to see more than 2GB for the life of me. Not even 4GB - video memory - misc memory = ~3GB, just plain 2GB... P5Q mobo recognizes 4GB with memory remap feature on, but OS sees only 2GB. If memory remap is turned off, as advised for 32bit OSes, BIOS sees 2GB, and OS inevitably 2GB again... /PAE or /3GB switches have done nothing for me. This is hopeless...

Re:Can't see more than 2GB on my Asus mobo...

[Anonymous Coward]

?Try booting with a Linux 64 bit LiveCD just to see if the memory is visible to any OS?

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[smash]

Or virtualization.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[GigaplexNZ]

a given process can only see 3 GB of memory, no matter how you set up your licensing

This isn't exactly true. An application can address 4GB of memory, 2GB of which is kernel space (reserved for things like graphics memory etc) and 2GB of user space. A tweak can be applied to change the balance to 1GB kernel / 3GB user space.

Windows 64b

[Amiralul]

I have an Asus P5B motherboard with the latest BIOS firmware installed. If I deactivate memory remapping in BIOS, when booting, only little above 3GB of RAM is displayed, although I have installed 4GB. Vista x64 or Windows 7 x64 can only see as much as BIOS sees, so not the full 4GB. On exactly the same hardware and settings, if I install Hackintosh, more precisely iDeneb, MacOS X can see the full 4GB of RAM. I think this is a little weird and I don't have an explanation for it. Also, /PAE on boot.ini on 32 bit Windows XP Pro doesn't work at all.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[PRMan]

But if Microsoft defaulted to 64-bit, Canon would HAVE to release 64-bit drivers. (BTW, my Canon Pixma ip2000 printer works on Windows 7 64-bit. I can't remember if the driver came from Windows itself or from Canon Europe. Canon Europe always has better drivers.)

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some versions of Windows are rumoured to be able to have more than one program open at a time. As it is, even the XP machine I use at work seems to be able to run the 9 programs I have currently open just fine.

Tell me, why is it a problem that each of those 9 programs are limited to 3 GB each, limiting my current memory usage to 27 GB (theoretically - I only have 2 GB installed)?

Are you really advocating that already bloated programs like Outlook should be bloated even more, to take more than 3 GB?

It will be several years before your average desktop PC has RAM enough to even allocate 3 GB to each of 10-15 programs.

I don't believe that

[Snaller]

Earlier this year i read an article about a software ram drive which could use this memory - you put 8gig in xp - xp could only see about 3.7 but the ramdrive could then use the rest for a ultra fast ramdrive.

And no, i can't remember the link.

Simple

[ITJC68]

If your system is going to use more than 4 GB of memory use the 64 bit version. I have 4 GB with 64 bit Vista and it has always ran smooth and very responsive. It is the same price if you buy the OEM or the upgrade.

not flamebait, simply advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, really, truly the most blatant lack of RTFA I've ever seen on Slashdot. I just read the whole, very clear and convincing thing before coming to skim comments on +5.... and it's all full of "PAE is a hack, get 64-bit", "he found lots of buggy drivers", "it's to do with drivers", "Windows 2008 drivers must be signed"... all stuff that is discredited in the article. It's very obvious that the limitation in 32-bit versions is artificial and it's not to do with the "long tale" of the demand curve as one commenter ignorantly suggested. Seriously, have you all turned into... journalists? Just nonsense: plain nonsense. +5 Insightful?! LISTEN AND YOU MIGHT LEARN SOMETHING.

Re:not flamebait, simply advice

[DangerousDriver]

But somehow SuperSpeed's RamDisk product (which I use in a 64-bit, 8GB Vista box so as Photoshop can have a 2GB+ scratch disk) offers 32-bit OS users the ability to see and use more than 4GB ...

RamDisk Plus 10 has a most unique feature. Our patent pending technology can access memory beyond the limitation imposed by a Windows 32-bit operating system! In other words, RamDisk Plus 10 can use "unmanaged" Windows' memory e.g. above 4GB. It can also use the stubbornly inaccessable memory between 3.2GB and 4GB. See the product's help file for detailed explanation of what "unmanaged" memory is and how to access and use it with RamDisk Plus 10.

Do they have to patch kernels to do this ... ? [see http://www.superspeed.com/servers/ramdisk.php%5D

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[2short]

Or data processing, in the case of me or any of my users.

But in any case, manipulating video is something you see only rare specialized users doing?

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I ended up saying screw it and went with Vista x64. I built a new system in January 2008 with 2x SLI 512MB card, and a 256MB graphics card for dual monitor support from when multi monitor SLI wasn't supported. I also had a TV Tuner and a Auzentech X-fi soundcard with 64MB of RAM on it. The system properties in Windows 32bit reported me having 2.5GB of RAM when I was running 8GB due to it only costing around $60 at the time.

someone please get rid of kdawson

[Hierophant7]

I'm really getting sick of the crap that kdawson posts.

This is complete and utter crap. For anyone to write/post that article, you would have to have zero understanding of memory addressing. Guess what. 2^32 = 4 294 967 296. That means that a 32-bit processor can only handle 4 billion memory addresses, or 4GB of RAM. Clearly software written for 32-bit processors are only going to be able to access the first 4GB. How would you tell software or an OS where to look for something in the 6th gig? OH OH I KNOW! You'd write 64-bit software.

kdawson, you are an idiot, and a detriment to this site. DIAF.

Just use Java

[Osvaldo Doederlein]

...as the latest JVMs have a "compressed pointers" option that allows the 64-bit VM to be as memory-efficient as 32-bit. This option limits max heap size to 32Gb, but this should be plenty for even most huge applications, for many years to come.

BTW this optimization is a great advantage of all "managed" languages/VMs; it's just impossible for langs like C/C++. Of course, you've got to actually implement it in a JIT compiler like Java's. But I think even an interpreter could do it. Notice that there is no tradeoff to code speed; although the code needs a couple extra instructions to compress/uncompress pointers at every usage of heap objects, this overhead is greatly reduced/hidden by JIT optimizations. (And for an interpreter, it's certainly just noise in the performance map.) Not to mention that the gains in reduced paging, cache misses and TLB misses will more than compensate for any remaining overheads.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I saw a process using anything close to 3 gigs of ram, I'd probably kill it.

Re:I don't understand... Simple: Greed.

[StikyPad]

if Microsoft defaulted to 64-bit, Canon would HAVE to release 64-bit drivers.

Microsoft doesn't default to anything, because Microsoft doesn't sell computers. Moreover, Vista and Win7 both come with licenses to install both 32 and 64-bit versions with the same product key, so this fellow's argument about licensing issues is moot.

It's the hardware sellers like Dell & HP that would need to install 64-bit OSes by default, but they won't do that just yet because people are still mostly buying computers with 4GB of RAM become more common. But every month/year they can put it off is another month/year for old devices to die and be replaced with more modern devices with existing 64-bit drivers. That means fewer "[Perform 30 minutes of generic troubleshooting steps] followed by [we're sorry, you need to contact the device manufacturer]" calls they'll receive, and fewer people returning their new PC because of unmet expectations, however misguided.

Exception, for now...

[Tavor]

They should be selling the 64-bit version. They should be preinstalling the 64-bit version. People *shouldn't* be using the 32-bit version, becuase there's still a very real architectural limitation in the 32-bit version: a given process can only see 3 GB of memory, no matter how you set up your licensing.

There is one very real exception to this rule, in the current market: the netbook. Netbooks tend to have less than 2GB (or only 1GB if Windows is installed - once again MS licensing greed) and the Atom is currently a 32-bit processor if I'm not mistaken. Could be wrong, but even so netbooks and people who specifically *need* 32-bit should be the only ones buying it. Almost all new computers being sold have 64-bit processors regardless of memory installed - why preinstall 32?

Consider donating to Geoff Chappell

[yuhong]

If you want to support this site, consider donating to Geoff Chappell: http://geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=support/index.htm&tx=3