XP Ram Limit..

That's the plan. Two hard drives, one for the CS3 swap file and data and
photo storage and another hard drive for the OS and programs. I
currently have it set for a different partition on my hard drive but I
don't think that's the same thing.

JS wrote:
Another thing that may help speed things up (I use the less expensive Adobe
Photo Shop Elements) is to have a second hard drive and set (a least in
Elements) the application's own swap file to the second drive.

JS

"JD" wrote in message
...
I think you are correct. I'll read the .pdf you pointed to and then decide
if I can go with as little as 256MB on the video card?

JS wrote:
A 1GB video card is overkill for what you want to do.
A 512MB card is more than enough.

JS

"JD" wrote in message
...
philo wrote:
"JD" wrote in message
...
Ken Blake, MVP wrote:
On Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:29:06 -0500, JD wrote:

I'm using XP home edition SP3 and I'm about to build a new computer.

I plan to install 4 GB of Ram but the shop that sells me the parts
says
Windows XP won't use all 4 GB. Is that true?
If it's 32-bit Windows, yes.
It's 32 bit Windows XP.

All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just XP) have a 4GB
address
space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can not
go.
But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you
can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.

Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no
address space to map it too.
I think I see what you're saying now. It's the address space, not the
amount of physical ram.

So if I have 4GB of ram and the 1GB video card then I'm not going to
be
able to use much more than 3GB of ram, if that much? It could be as
little as 2.1 to 2.5 GB? Or do I still have it screwed up?

I could go with 512 KB on the video card I guess but the 1GB card is
actually cheaper right now, it's on sale.

I'm an amateur photographer but I use Photoshop Complete Suite 3 and
it's a real memory hog. That's why I'm trying to install the most ram
I
can use but I don't need to install ram that I'll never be able to
use.

snip

Though it won't hurt to put in 4 gigs of RAM, as mentioned your OS will
not
be able to use all of
it.
BTW: Photoshop is pretty CPU intensive, so hopefully you will be using
a
nice, fast dual core CPU.

If you really want to use the full 4 gigs of RAM or more,
you may want to consider the 64 bit version of XP.

I can confirm that it works very well with Photoshop.

(I am not recommending the 64 bit version of Vista, simply because I
have
not evalutated it)


I have a second XP install disk so I'll be staying with the 32 bit
version of XP.

I'm looking to install a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 6000+ and
use two hard drives so I can put the photoshop scratch disk on the
second hard drive. I planned to use two Kingston 2048MB PC5400 DDR2
667MHz Memory (2 x 1024MB).

Two questions for you since you mentioned photoshop.

With the above processor, is PS CS3 going to work well with only 2 GB of
ram? The motherboard I'm looking at uses dual layer ram but it has to be
installed in pairs.

And do I really need a GB of ram on the video card? I'm not a gamer just
an PS amateur that doesn't like to wait for images to process as I
manipulate them .

I currently have 2GB of 400Mhz PC3200 DDR ram and a AMD Sempron 2600+
333 FSB processor. And a 128MB DDR memory AGP ATI video card.

--
JD..

--
JD..


--
JD..

I wanted to say thanks to everyone for the lengthy discussion regarding
XP and RAM. It was very helpful.

I plan to purchase a video card with 256MB of memory and install 2GB of
system ram. I can always add more RAM later after I see how the new
system runs.

JD wrote:
I'm using XP home edition SP3 and I'm about to build a new computer.

I plan to install 4 GB of Ram but the shop that sells me the parts says
Windows XP won't use all 4 GB. Is that true?

I also plan to install a video card with 1 GB of ram. Back with Windows
98SE I was told the OS counted both the motherboard ram and the video
card ram and that there could be problems if that total amount was over
2 GB, or something like that. Does a similar problem exist with XP?





--
JD..

You're welcome.

JS

"JD" wrote in message
...
I wanted to say thanks to everyone for the lengthy discussion regarding XP
and RAM. It was very helpful.

I plan to purchase a video card with 256MB of memory and install 2GB of
system ram. I can always add more RAM later after I see how the new system
runs.

JD wrote:
I'm using XP home edition SP3 and I'm about to build a new computer.

I plan to install 4 GB of Ram but the shop that sells me the parts says
Windows XP won't use all 4 GB. Is that true?

I also plan to install a video card with 1 GB of ram. Back with Windows
98SE I was told the OS counted both the motherboard ram and the video
card ram and that there could be problems if that total amount was over 2
GB, or something like that. Does a similar problem exist with XP?





--
JD..