Win10 32 bit

Just curious why 32bit Win10 even exists.

I don't think one could find anything other than a 64bit mobo .

Supposedly Win10 32 will run with less RAM but I could not imagine
running any machine with less than 4 gigs of RAM. 8 gigs minimum seems
to be pretty standard.

I recently purchased a new mobo that would not even support only 2 gigs
of RAM. Minimum to even boot was 4 gigs

"philo" wrote

| Just curious why 32bit Win10 even exists.
|

Maybe for 32-bit conversions from Win7? Maybe
for smaller devices? Maybe because full 64-bit support
is just now happening and some software still only
comes in 32-bit? At this point 32-bit compatibility
is probably still more common than 64-bit.

| I don't think one could find anything other than a 64bit mobo .
|

What's a 64-bit motherboard? I just built
a new box for my XP last year. It runs an
8-core AMD on an Asus motherboard. Thanks
to AMD, Intel was forced to support both 32
and 64-bit in the same CPU. I bought a new
printer a few months ago. HP. It has XP
drivers.

It's like cellphones and highspeed. If you
listen to Silicon Valley marketers you might
think all of the US is calling Uber on an iPhone
to meet their Foursquare buddies at Starbucks.
But only about 2/3 of the US even has highspeed.
I have a brother in NH who only recently got
DSL access. Before that he was using satellite,
which would cut out on cloudy days. He doesn't
get cellphone service at his house.
A similar number in the US have computer
phones.

Win-64? Very few people need it.
Eventually they probably will, but not yet, and
probably not for some time to come. Microsoft
and Mozilla and some other companies are very
talented at using up any hardware resources you
give them, but they don't need to.

| Supposedly Win10 32 will run with less RAM but I could not imagine
| running any machine with less than 4 gigs of RAM. 8 gigs minimum seems
| to be pretty standard.
|
I run most of the time on 32-bit. The mania
over massive RAM is just that. What do you do that
needs 8 GB RAM? Video editing? Multiple video
streams?
It's like suburban pickup truck drivers who get
jacked up suspension, hunting lights, and various
other fancy add-ons but only drive to the grocery
store and back. You can buy a cheap computer
with 16 GB RAM or more, but you probably don't
need that. It's just that people are impressed by
the high numbers.

I have a Win7-64 box that I occasionally use for
big things like editing large video or audio files, but
other than that, XP-32 responds instantly in
nearly everything I do. Instantly. Can Win10-64
do that? That includes image editing.

| I recently purchased a new mobo that would not even support only 2 gigs
| of RAM. Minimum to even boot was 4 gigs

Yes. So what? My latest box is similar. I bought
one 4 GB RAM stick to go in it. At the time a 4 GB
stick was very cheap, so there was no sense buying
less.

"philo" wrote

| Just curious why 32bit Win10 even exists.
|

There's an apropos discussion today in the
Firefox group. Someone asked why, when he
clicked the download link at Mozilla, he wasn't
automatically given 64-bit Firefox for his 64-bit
Windows. People explained that few use 64-bit
Firefox because there's no advantage and some
add-ons don't work with it.

That's pretty much the case in general: 64-bit
allows for bigger numbers as default. That's all.
But in doing so it requires rewriting software and
using new functions. There's no sense writing
64-bit software if it still has to use 32-bit values
in function calls. So 32-bit software runs on Win64
because Microsoft provided for a smooth transition,
but the opposite is not true and cannot be made
to work. Meanwhile, for the vast majority of
computing tasks, having those bigger numbers as
default is just not needed yet. It's more like
planning for the future.

The only notable difference now is the RAM
limitation. But as noted, that has very little real
effect for most people. I actually built a new
Win7-64 box for my ladyfriend recently, because
she does large scale digital photography work so
I figured she could benefit from more RAM, and I
didn't want to wait so long that she might be
stuck with Win10. But one of her printers didn't
have Win7 drivers that work. (Like USB in Win95,
Microsoft offers drivers. They just don't work.
And she didn't like the general complications of
moving to Win7, while she was having no trouble
working on XP. So the Win7-64 is there for later.

On 04/16/2017 09:37 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"philo" wrote

| Just curious why 32bit Win10 even exists.
|

Maybe for 32-bit conversions from Win7? Maybe
for smaller devices? Maybe because full 64-bit support
is just now happening and some software still only
comes in 32-bit? At this point 32-bit compatibility
is probably still more common than 64-bit.

| I don't think one could find anything other than a 64bit mobo .
|

What's a 64-bit motherboard? I just built
a new box for my XP last year. It runs an
8-core AMD on an Asus motherboard. Thanks
to AMD, Intel was forced to support both 32
and 64-bit in the same CPU. I bought a new
printer a few months ago. HP. It has XP
drivers.

It's like cellphones and highspeed. If you
listen to Silicon Valley marketers you might
think all of the US is calling Uber on an iPhone
to meet their Foursquare buddies at Starbucks.
But only about 2/3 of the US even has highspeed.
I have a brother in NH who only recently got
DSL access. Before that he was using satellite,
which would cut out on cloudy days. He doesn't
get cellphone service at his house.
A similar number in the US have computer
phones.

Win-64? Very few people need it.
Eventually they probably will, but not yet, and
probably not for some time to come. Microsoft
and Mozilla and some other companies are very
talented at using up any hardware resources you
give them, but they don't need to.

| Supposedly Win10 32 will run with less RAM but I could not imagine
| running any machine with less than 4 gigs of RAM. 8 gigs minimum seems
| to be pretty standard.
|
I run most of the time on 32-bit. The mania
over massive RAM is just that. What do you do that
needs 8 GB RAM? Video editing? Multiple video
streams?
It's like suburban pickup truck drivers who get
jacked up suspension, hunting lights, and various
other fancy add-ons but only drive to the grocery
store and back. You can buy a cheap computer
with 16 GB RAM or more, but you probably don't
need that. It's just that people are impressed by
the high numbers.

I have a Win7-64 box that I occasionally use for
big things like editing large video or audio files, but
other than that, XP-32 responds instantly in
nearly everything I do. Instantly. Can Win10-64
do that? That includes image editing.

| I recently purchased a new mobo that would not even support only 2 gigs
| of RAM. Minimum to even boot was 4 gigs

Yes. So what? My latest box is similar. I bought
one 4 GB RAM stick to go in it. At the time a 4 GB
stick was very cheap, so there was no sense buying
less.





Thank you for the reply.

Yes, I can now see the logic...upgrading Win7 32bit to Win10 would make
some sense I guess..but really I don't see the point in even upgrading
Win7 to Win10 but maybe if there is new hardware that has no Win7
drivers that would make sense.

As to RAM , I need as much as I can get because there art times I may be
editing a large image in Photoshop and doing other work as well.

RAM is so cheap...I figure might as well do it.

On 04/16/2017 11:20 AM, Mayayana wrote:
"philo" wrote

| Just curious why 32bit Win10 even exists.
|

There's an apropos discussion today in the
Firefox group. Someone asked why, when he
clicked the download link at Mozilla, he wasn't
automatically given 64-bit Firefox for his 64-bit
Windows. People explained that few use 64-bit
Firefox because there's no advantage and some
add-ons don't work with it.




Just noticed on my Win7 64 machine FF is 32 bit...
I have no plans to change it.
That's pretty much the case in general: 64-bit
allows for bigger numbers as default. That's all.
But in doing so it requires rewriting software and
using new functions. There's no sense writing
64-bit software if it still has to use 32-bit values
in function calls. So 32-bit software runs on Win64
because Microsoft provided for a smooth transition,
but the opposite is not true and cannot be made
to work. Meanwhile, for the vast majority of
computing tasks, having those bigger numbers as
default is just not needed yet. It's more like
planning for the future.

The only notable difference now is the RAM
limitation. But as noted, that has very little real
effect for most people. I actually built a new
Win7-64 box for my ladyfriend recently, because
she does large scale digital photography work so
I figured she could benefit from more RAM, and I
didn't want to wait so long that she might be
stuck with Win10. But one of her printers didn't
have Win7 drivers that work. (Like USB in Win95,
Microsoft offers drivers. They just don't work.
And she didn't like the general complications of
moving to Win7, while she was having no trouble
working on XP. So the Win7-64 is there for later.





As to Win95 (b)

Only once did I see a machine where the USB actually worked...it was a
Packard Bell and I kept it for my collection.

I recall compiling a USB kernel for RedHat 5.2 and putting in a USB add
on card, but never got it to work.

In more recent times, I talked to a friend who used to write drivers for
a living and he told me I would have had to have done more than just add
USB support, I would have had to have added particulars about the card
itself and that if the machine had on-board USB it might have worked though.

I'm so far behind...it was not until two weeks ago that I finally
upgraded my own machines to USB-3

On 04/16/2017 09:37 AM, Mayayana wrote:

[snip]

I run most of the time on 32-bit. The mania
over massive RAM is just that. What do you do that
needs 8 GB RAM? Video editing? Multiple video
streams?

I need it on one machine, for running virtual machines.

[snip]

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"When religion comes in at the door common sense goes out at the
window." [Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other
Essays_]

[snip]

The only notable difference now is the RAM
limitation.

Apparently many people don't know that that memory limitation is
completely artificial. Nearly all CPUs allow up to 64GB RAM in 32-bit
mode. It's just Windows that won't let you use it.

This limitation does not apply to other OSes, such as Linux.

[snip]


--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"When religion comes in at the door common sense goes out at the
window." [Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other
Essays_]

"Mark Lloyd" wrote

| Apparently many people don't know that that memory limitation is
| completely artificial.... It's just Windows that won't let you use it.
|

That seems pretty real to me.

On 04/16/2017 01:08 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 04/16/2017 09:37 AM, Mayayana wrote:

[snip]

I run most of the time on 32-bit. The mania
over massive RAM is just that. What do you do that
needs 8 GB RAM? Video editing? Multiple video
streams?

I need it on one machine, for running virtual machines.

[snip]

Win10_32 in a virtual machine would make sense

On 04/16/2017 01:11 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:

[snip]

The only notable difference now is the RAM
limitation.

Apparently many people don't know that that memory limitation is
completely artificial. Nearly all CPUs allow up to 64GB RAM in 32-bit
mode. It's just Windows that won't let you use it.

This limitation does not apply to other OSes, such as Linux.

[snip]





Yes before I moved up to a 64 bit version of Linux I could use more RAM
by using a PAE kernel and it was as simple as that

Mark Lloyd wrote:

[snip]

The only notable difference now is the RAM
limitation.

Apparently many people don't know that that memory limitation is
completely artificial. Nearly all CPUs allow up to 64GB RAM in 32-bit
mode. It's just Windows that won't let you use it.

This limitation does not apply to other OSes, such as Linux.

[snip]

This is patently Not True.

Processors have physical memory limits. The low end are capped
on purpose by Intel. The high end are capped by the limits
of the imagination of the JEDEC staff.

Intel (on purpose), ensures that their $17 processor
cannot support "too much RAM". Doing this, prevents
the $17 processor from being offered in a $500 laptop.
Not in a million years, will that $17 processor be
accessing 64GB of RAM.

The Walmart Black Friday tablet for $100, was limited
to 1GB of RAM. Attempts to solder more RAM to the
motherboard, would be useless. Intel controls the
RAM limit. As the price goes up, both the bus count,
the RAM limits, they go up. The very worst of Intel
processors, only has "half-a-bus", and the memory path
is 32 bit. Regular DIMMs are 64 bits wide (and this
has nothing to do with the bitness of the processor
either, it just happens to be the preferred size with
respect to cache line size and DRAM burst size and so
on). The Intel processor with the 32 bit wide memory bus,
the only memory option is soldering chips to the
motherboard.

For garbage like this, it wouldn't matter whether you
ran Linux or Windows, 32 bit or 64 bit OS. It's a
hardware limit.

*******

Your references seems to be an oblique reference to PAE,
a feature available since Pentium III days. At the time,
PAE was set up for 36 bits (64GB, as you say). A virtual
translation from a 32-bit program 32 bit address, would
come out of the TLB as a 36-bit value. However, PAE
implementations since then, have used even larger busses
for this. AMD has had some bigger PAE implementations
than some of the Intel ones (say, 40 bits or so, suited
to multi-socket server boards and immense address spaces).
I don't regularly re-examine this to see what the value
is today. But it can be bigger.

PAE is not a free lunch. To use all 64GB of RAM you might
be so lucky to have, you would need 16 separate programs,
each using their 4GB limit each. A single program under
PAE, cannot access the entire 64GB for itself. Even under
Linux. There is still a limitation, based on how page
tables work. With the kernel/user split, you typically
need double that number, or 32 programs, in practical
situations.

PAE mode is also used, to support NX (no execute bit), since
the page table has room for the storage of the NX bit, on a
per-entry basis. So while to end users, PAE may seem to be
"only a means for a 32-bit process to be placed in a
larger address space", it also supports a page table
construct that is useful for other things. This is why
PAE was enabled by default on my WinXP SP3, for NX
(No Execute) support. It was not intended to violate
the memory license, which remains at "4GB" on the Microsoft
page listing memory limits. The "4GB" value is artificial,
and enforced by the 32-bit OS. It's not an actual hardware
issue (some comments by Mark Russinovich allude to this).

The "memory license" is actually an address space license,
so you can "waste it" as you see fit. For example, insert a
big-ass video card, lose the ability to access more of your
memory DIMMs (while using your 32-bit OS).

"Our memory licenses..."
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...(v=vs.85).aspx

PAE allows the selection of a 4GB address "window", into a larger
field of physical RAM. When PAE first came out, no implementation
could really make use of it for that purpose. Once it became
useful (physical RAM was becoming big enough), it was capped by
the "memory license". In an example here, a dude cracks the license
and uses 8GB on Vista 32-bit. So for whatever hardware drivers
were in this machine, the machine didn't tip over. This is 8GB
in Ring3.

http://www.geoffchappell.com/notes/w...nse/memory.htm

At the present time, I am using *8GB* on WinXP SP3 (the machine
I'm typing on). It turns out, the memory license does not apply
to drivers in Ring0. As a consequence, I have a 4GB RAMDisk on
this machine. Which is a good location for the GIMP swap. The
memory license actually applies to Ring3 (applications), not
to Ring0 (kernel and drivers). The author of my RAMDisk code,
has stopped supporting this (how many Microsoft lawyers
does that take, one wonders...). So 4GB of my RAM is for
Ring3 (applications), and 4GB happens to be a RAMdisk in
Ring0.

https://s17.postimg.org/47rawwzlr/RAMDisk.gif

*******

In terms of physical limits, the first result I can find here
suggests 8 DIMMs of 16GB each. So there is an LGA2011-V3 processor
for desktops, with 128GB physical limit. And you would hope that's
not using the same PAE values, as the Pentium III did (if you
sought to run a 32-bit OS on this). Since at least some
software is hard-coded for 64GB behaviors, you may run into
the occasional problem using all of your 128GB largess.

http://ark.intel.com/products/94456/...50-GHz?q=6950x

I wouldn't attempt to find the server platform limit, since there
are so many to choose from.

Paul

philo wrote:
Just curious why 32bit Win10 even exists.

I don't think one could find anything other than a 64bit mobo .

Supposedly Win10 32 will run with less RAM but I could not imagine running any
machine with less than 4 gigs of RAM. 8 gigs minimum seems to be pretty standard.

I recently purchased a new mobo that would not even support only 2 gigs of RAM.
Minimum to even boot was 4 gigs
I bought a re-furbished 5 year old HP 32bit with Win 7 from Walmart for $75
about a year ago. 64 bit cost more but I just wanted cheap. I named it "Test"
and used it to try the upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10 before I applied Win 10 to
the other three Win 7 machines on my network.

I also apply the latest Win 10 upgrades to Test first to make sure there are no
surprises. Any new software such as anti-virus, backups, etc are also installed
on Test first to see if there any problems. This was especially useful when I
upgraded to 15063.138 and one or two programs gave me a warning in the Action
Center. Fortunately, all I had click on "x" a couple of times and I stopped
getting the notice.

On 04/16/2017 04:56 PM, Arnie Goetchius wrote:
philo wrote:
Just curious why 32bit Win10 even exists.

I don't think one could find anything other than a 64bit mobo .

Supposedly Win10 32 will run with less RAM but I could not imagine running any
machine with less than 4 gigs of RAM. 8 gigs minimum seems to be pretty standard.

I recently purchased a new mobo that would not even support only 2 gigs of RAM.
Minimum to even boot was 4 gigs
I bought a re-furbished 5 year old HP 32bit with Win 7 from Walmart for $75
about a year ago. 64 bit cost more but I just wanted cheap. I named it "Test"
and used it to try the upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10 before I applied Win 10 to
the other three Win 7 machines on my network.

I also apply the latest Win 10 upgrades to Test first to make sure there are no
surprises. Any new software such as anti-virus, backups, etc are also installed
on Test first to see if there any problems. This was especially useful when I
upgraded to 15063.138 and one or two programs gave me a warning in the Action
Center. Fortunately, all I had click on "x" a couple of times and I stopped
getting the notice.




Good idea.

I also test operating systems and upgrades on either spare machines or
spare hard drives. before I make a decision to go ahead and use it.

On 16/04/2017 15:15:25, philo wrote:
Just curious why 32bit Win10 even exists.

I don't think one could find anything other than a 64bit mobo .

Supposedly Win10 32 will run with less RAM but I could not imagine running
any machine with less than 4 gigs of RAM. 8 gigs minimum seems to be pretty
standard.

I recently purchased a new mobo that would not even support only 2 gigs of
RAM. Minimum to even boot was 4 gigs

I'm running 32bit on an 14 year old non fancy HP4045 laptop with 2GB
ram. It started life with XP, went on to Vista, Win 7 and now Win 10.
The only upgrade it has had was upping the ram to 2GB.

--
mick

On 04/17/2017 08:59 AM, mick wrote:
On 16/04/2017 15:15:25, philo wrote:
Just curious why 32bit Win10 even exists.

I don't think one could find anything other than a 64bit mobo .

Supposedly Win10 32 will run with less RAM but I could not imagine
running any machine with less than 4 gigs of RAM. 8 gigs minimum seems
to be pretty standard.

I recently purchased a new mobo that would not even support only 2
gigs of RAM. Minimum to even boot was 4 gigs

I'm running 32bit on an 14 year old non fancy HP4045 laptop with 2GB
ram. It started life with XP, went on to Vista, Win 7 and now Win 10.
The only upgrade it has had was upping the ram to 2GB.




Well, now I certainly see why there is a Win 10 32 bit