On 12/22/2010 10:48 AM PT, Alias typed:

A couple days ago, I upgraded my old 32-bit Windows XP Pro. SP3 (IE6)
system/computer/system to an Intel i7 with 6 GB of RAM. I know that
32-bit operating systems/OS' cannot see all that RAM due to old software
designs' limitations. Currently, my working Windows only sees about 2.5
GB of physical RAM (shouldn't it be 3 GB though?).

.5 is being used for video.

Oh, that's normal? I thought video cards have and use their own VRAM
without using the motherboard's installed RAM. I have an two years old
ATI Radeon 4870 video with 512 MB of VRAM with the latest ATI/AMD
Catalyst driver (v10.12). So if I have a video card with 1 GB of RAM,
then my RAM goes down to 2 GB? I wonder what it is like for those with 2
GB of RAM with 1 GB of VRAM. Ouch, 1 GB free?


I heard that I can use the unused memory for other things like a RAM
drive for swap files, %temp%, etc. How do I do that?

You heard wrong.

Hmm, that sucks. SO basically, I am wasting my extra unused RAM.
Crap. RAM was on sale for cheap for a hundred bucks a several weeks ago.


And yes, I will get 64-bit W7 or another OS one day. At this time, I am
not going to do that since XP Pro. SP3 does fine for what I need.

If you want to use all your RAM, you will need a 64 bit OS, be it XP,
Win 7.

Or Vista, Linux, or whatever 64-bit OS.
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