Is it true XP has no ram limitation?

[yoda313]

I seem to remember hearing that XP can utilize any amount of ram you have on your pc. Wasn't there some kind of functional limit in Win 98? So if you can get up to 4gb of ram (system ram not gaming ram on graphics cards) you would be able to utilize all of it?

Also I was curious, if I were to bump up my 512mb pc3200 ram to 1gb or more would I notice any sizeable increase in video encoding? I know encoding is tied to cpu speed but does the extra ram help there too?

[terjeber]

I seem to remember hearing that XP can utilize any amount of ram you have on your pc.

Up to 4G, and then you will only have the pleasure of using two of those. 2G would be reserved for XP. Practically, having more than 2G of RAM on regular Windows XP isn't going to give you a lot.

Also I was curious, if I were to bump up my 512mb pc3200 ram to 1gb or more would I notice any sizeable increase in video encoding? I know encoding is tied to cpu speed but does the extra ram help there too?

Amount of RAM usually do not have an impact on rendering speed, on the other hand you have very little, which means that your PC is probably slowing down due to lack of resources in general. For video work 1G of RAM is the practical minimum today (at least if you edit). I would upgrade, you will get a general performance increase.

[yoda313]

For video work 1G of RAM is the practical minimum today (at least if you edit). I would upgrade, you will get a general performance increase.

Thanks I'll look into it. (grins to self as I pick up the weekend ads - BEST BUY HERE I COME! )

[jagabo]

For video work 1G of RAM is the practical minimum today (at least if you edit). I would upgrade, you will get a general performance increase.

Thanks I'll look into it. (grins to self as I pick up the weekend ads - BEST BUY HERE I COME! :D)

You may find the system more responsive when EDITING, but the encoding will not go appreciably faster.

[vhelp]

Morning all.

These are based on my experiences when running software under my WIN98 system.


As far as speed goes ...

I would say that it really is dependant on the MPEG Encoder application,
and then, weather or not, you are working it (internal area of processing)
in those areas that require a additional ram. During those busy and number
crunching activities, this is where your system may be requiring more RAM
for your MPEG Encoder processing. But, tipically-easy encoding processes
most likely wont need that additional RAM pulling.


GOP processes ...

Here is an area where I find my RAM is pulled, and my HDD activities starts
up during certain encoding processes during this time. This is an area of
advanced setup, but might not effect you -- depends.

Depending on how your GOP layout is, and how effeciant or not, it is set up
to encode your mpeg's. The more complicated your GOP layout is, the more
RAM you will most likely need.. hence, a slight slow-up in your MPEG encoding
projects.

.
.

There are other facts that can contribute to slight slow-up, but this is
also dependant upon the VIDEO LENGTH and FPS throughout the MPEG encoding
process of a given source project.


NOISEY VIDEO ...

This is also another cause for a slight slow-up in MPEG encoding. But I think
that this is also MPEG Encoder dependant.


FILTERING process ...

The last and final cause is Filtering. How many filters and how much aggresively
the params are utilized in them will reflect speed as well. But of course, you
know this already.


Final note..
(this is a possibility) ..If you hear anyone saying that they *did not* get any
slight slow-up in their MPEG encoding and using your same setup, then it
is posible that they are using a different MPEG encoder app.

Capturing doesn't require much RAM. So, upgrading for this is totally unessasary
(you'll gain nothing)

But, as was hinted, EDITING video can require a lot of RAM. But that is also
under the control of the OS version and it's RAMing capabilities.

Reminding you one last time, ..this is my experience under WIN98 system

-vhelp 3891

[MOVIEGEEK]

I went from 512MB to 1GB and noticed a slight improvement in editing and a signifigant improvement in gaming.The main reason is I'm using a dual channel chipset,all Intel chipsets since 865PE have it.If you have 4 RAM slots and are using 2 sticks you should use slot 1 and slot 3 for better performance.

[JerryB]

I seem to remember hearing that XP can utilize any amount of ram you have on your pc. Wasn't there some kind of functional limit in Win 98? So if you can get up to 4gb of ram (system ram not gaming ram on graphics cards) you would be able to utilize all of it?

Also I was curious, if I were to bump up my 512mb pc3200 ram to 1gb or more would I notice any sizeable increase in video encoding? I know encoding is tied to cpu speed but does the extra ram help there too?

As far as win98, First there very few win98 programs that are able utliize more than 512 megs of ram!! Your generally looking at high end paint programs like photshop, cad programs, etc... there no significant performance boost going above 512.... for vast majority of win98 programs...

At APPX the 1 gig ram level.... win98 has problems managing anthing more than 1 gig.... There is a fix on the M$ tech support site than can be tried to make win98 work better with more than 1 gig of ram... but doesn't work all the time.. what many people will do if they have lot of extra ram in the win98 system and the fix don't work... is to make that extra ram into a "ram disk" (sometimes called a virtual ram drive) ... and use the ram disk as temp[orary storage of work files... it lot faster grabbing files from the ram disk than gong to the hard drive.... in the old msdos systems.. ram disk was very popular you would setup entire programs to work from the ram disk.. got a big speed boos....

[Dubber]

Quick answer - WinXP cannot address more than 4GB of memory. If you have 4GB, then 2GB will be used by programs and the other 2GB - by Windows.

More detailed answer from Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

Salute.

[zoobie]

I read 2gb for XP a couple of days ago so this seems consistent

[redwudz]

Windows XP 64-bit supports a maximum of 128GB of RAM. With that large of a memory, you could replace the hards drives with RAM modules and make a completely solid state system. (Minus the optical drives)

Maybe this will happen in a few more years on a consumer level, if RAM prices drop enough for it to be practical. It would run you about $9000US for the RAM presently.

And if you are ever curious how much RAM you are using when running a program, open Task Manager and look. Most of the time when I am encoding, it runs around 300-400MB max. That includes other processes running in the computer.

You could put 2 or 4 GB in a XP32 computer, but the system and especially encoder programs will never use it. It can be used with programs like Photoshop to hold images in memory while editing them. A video editor may be able to use some memory above 1GB, but even there it probably won't increase editing speed as much as having separate hard drives.

[Cobra]

I read an article in an issue of Custom PC months back that stated that more RAM can actually slow some Windows applications down. Weird, but apparently true.

[Doramius]

I read an article in an issue of Custom PC months back that stated that more RAM can actually slow some Windows applications down. Weird, but apparently true.

Maybe for some of the lower FSBs. I don't think that's true if you're running faster than 533. I could be wrong, and my wife would probably agree. :P

[lordsmurf]

I find that the OS and software never uses more than 700-800MB anyway, regardless of how much is open and in use. CPU and HDD speed is the bottleneck, RAM does not help much beyond that. Point of diminishing returns.

[Doramius]

I'll agree to that. I find having a 1GB stick, A 10k RPM HDD, and a CPU even at 2.8GHz Running at 800FSB, runs smoother and better than someone with 4GB RAM, a 7200RPM HDD, and 3.2GHz CPU at 533FSB.



I don't care if the opening is 30", If the neck is only 1 inch. I might as well pour sand into a 2" opening. No point in paying more money into the opening unless I get a bigger neck too.

[whitejremiah]

For video work 1G of RAM is the practical minimum today (at least if you edit). I would upgrade, you will get a general performance increase.

Thanks I'll look into it. (grins to self as I pick up the weekend ads - BEST BUY HERE I COME! )

try something like newegg or tigerdirect instead of best buy if your gonna do upgrades, yes it will take a few days, however you can very likely get whatever your looking for, for about half the price, just kinda for example, i was recently looking for 1gb ram sticks, i called around to a few local places, and most wanted OVER 100 dollars for a pc3200 stick...i checked newegg and tigerdirect, and both were roughly HALF that price SHIPPED.....just kinda some advice unless you absolutely need it, and you need it NOW....

[dipstick]

Adobe Premiere 2.0 recomends a minimum of 1 GIG ram and can use up to 3 GIGs.

[Morse2]

Hi Yoda 313;

32 bit XP can address a maximum of 4GB unless you set /PAE in your boot.ini file. "PAE" is Paged Address Extension, which allows up to 16 times the 4GB or 64GB of addressability. However, PAE does slow things down a bit due to the extra overhead. PAE is also set in SP2 when the Data Exectutioin Prevention is in it's default "optin" setting. If you turn it off by using the "alwaysoff" in your boot.ini you will need to add /PAE to get the extra addressability.

Even with x64 Pro there are issues above 4GB though - will your motherboard allow it? Most won't. Even motherboards that claim "4GB max ram" will usually cut you off at 3 due to their BIOS limitations (if the BIOS doesn't have some sort of "memory mapping" in it, some of your memory addressability will be lost due to the necessity of maintaining addressability to PCI cards and suchlike). Tyan 2865's do have memory mapping and do indeed recognize almost all of 4GB (3.75 is the most I've ever seen show up out of 4GB) so for now, 3GB is the practical limit for most users and 4GB is the practical limit for anyone unable to part with the $$$ for a true server board set up with multiple CPU sockets and the ability to address 24+GB of RAM (and server ram is pricier - you're looking at Enterprise grade registered ECC memory rather than consumer level unbuffered non-error correcting memory).

If you want more computing "power" (in terms of memory handling and throughput) be ready to either wait a bit or dig very very deep into your wallet. The only way out of the situation (a little) is to have 2 or 3 computers operating in a cluster. There the scalability is almost linear (twice the money = almost twice the throughput). If you're not up to building a Beowulf (linux machine where several parallel computers look like one big computer to the end user) you can always use a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch and manually "assign" tasks - so one computer can be ripping optical discs while another is handling video editing - and transfer data between them with a crosspatch gigabit ethernet link.

All the best,
Morse

[Weeji]

I recently upgraded from 1GB to 2 GB since I used Maya and 3d Studio Max for work for school (out of school now). I noticed a large performance boost in newer "Next-Gen" games such as Quake 4, etc., as well as while I was using the 3d animation software. Windows, combined with all the Anti-Spyware, Anti-Virus, Firewall, Anti-this, Anti-that, takes a large load of your ram, so a RAM upgrade will usually help right up until you reach that 2GB mark.

[yoda313]

Thanks for all the advice