Is this Normal with 6 gigs of memory?

[ineedhelp007]

So I threw in 6 gigs of memory in my home theatre computer and plopped in a vista 64bit disk and loaded it on a one of its three hard drives and left the other two that used the 32 bit running so i could see the dif. So when i run 32bit only 3 gigs of ram works. The video card pulls a total of 1.5 gigs on the 32 bit and 2 gigs on the 64bit. It is on a 50 inch plasma tv. But do cards normally want to suck that much memory? And will I really see the difference on the 64 bit? I haven't really finished installing all the drivers but all of my hardware supports 64 bit so i am okay there.

[Baldrick]

Please change the subject so it describes your topic better. Just click on the edit-button on your post to change it.

[TJohns]

Yes, that's normal. An OS "reserves" a large chunk of memory for various memory-mapped devices (video, PCI controllers, etc, etc). Since 32 bits can only count up to 4GB anyway, you'll never get 4GB of "free" memory available to the OS ... hence the development of 64 bit OS's

Trev

[jman98]

I really can't recommend that you run Vista and if you have any way to run 64 bit XP instead, I'd recommend that. Let me tell you my story about why Vista sucks. A friend who runs a small business bought a cheap laptop at Best Buy for his employee to use. It came preinstalled with Vista and had 512 MB of memory. Vista ran incredibly slow on it. Not enough memory. He went back to Best Buy and bought a 1 GB memory module. He bought the right one for the laptop. He put it in correctly. Upon powering up, Vista just crapped all over itself with a Blue Screen Of Death. It could NOT be fixed. Removing the memory did not help. The repair disc did not help. In desperation he brought it to me and the only thing I could do that worked was that I booted a Linux CD, deleted the disk partition from the hard drive so that it could not boot and only then did the Vista repair disc work. It reinstalled Vista to the hard drive and the laptop, now with 1.5 GB of memory, works like a champ. That is just ridiculous. So don't be surprised if you run Vista and one day upgrade something on your PC and then you get the BSOD too and you can't do anything to make Vista happy again except a destructive reinstall.

[stantheman1976]

I just popped a 2GB memory stick into my Toshiba Satellite running Vista Home Premium and had no gliteches at all. It recognized the memory instantly upon bootup and now I'm running a cool 2.5GB.

[Krispy Kritter]

The whole OS issue aside (I prefer XP, but I'm also running Vista without any problems), I see no reason to even use more than 2GB in a HTPC. For normal HTPC operation (recording and playing video), you could likely even get by with less.

[stantheman1976]

Well, in my case I had a gift card and didn't know what to buy. A 2GB stick used up the gift card. My laptop came with two 512MB sticks so I just took one out and kept the other in.

[rallynavvie]

IIRC 32-bit OS support up to 3.7GB which then the rest is reserved for ICH processes like PCI bus and such.

I have to ask everyone that does this though: why all the memory? You realize an HTPC isn't going to utilize a third of that? In fact most consumer apps will never use half of that. I'm putting the "more memory always means more performance" myth of pre-Win2k days to rest one poster at a time

[Krispy Kritter]

IIRC 32-bit OS support up to 3.7GB which then the rest is reserved for ICH processes like PCI bus and such.

I have to ask everyone that does this though: why all the memory? You realize an HTPC isn't going to utilize a third of that? In fact most consumer apps will never use half of that. I'm putting the "more memory always means more performance" myth of pre-Win2k days to rest one poster at a time

My point exactly.

[ineedhelp007]

Well on the 64bit I turned the Virtual Memory down to the bare minimum so it runs on all the physical and it still sucks between 4-5 gigs of memory. But from what i've read you guys are saying that 3.7 gigs on 32bit should be fine. However i found that high def videos were smoother on 64 bit. So I'm still torn on whether or not to stay 64 with 6gigs or the 32 with 4 gigs

[lordsmurf]

The only software I have that eats memory is Adobe Master Collection CS3. Those apps suck the RAM down. Previous Adobe software did not. It's not a "bad thing", but it's very powerful and feature-rich software and needs it.

[rallynavvie]

The only software I have that eats memory is Adobe Master Collection CS3. Those apps suck the RAM down. Previous Adobe software did not. It's not a "bad thing", but it's very powerful and feature-rich software and needs it.

Yeah, professional software can utilize memory a bit more because of the plethora of options you need to have readily available. You can also have multiple documents open, each residing in its own chunk of memory. AfterEffects can put to use any spare memory for its real-time previews. However I've found that an ultra-high bandwidth scratch disk will suffice for performance increases with these as well. I have a dedicated scratch disk array for this: two 15k U320 Cheetahs striped on a dual-channel HBA. This is the only use I can see for RAID 0 honestly. That data is only there for the duration of the session and thus it doesn't matter much if it fails.

[ineedhelp007]

well i switched to 64bit and like it a lot all my hardware works fine.

[JohnnyMalaria]

I perplexed as to why your video card is using so much system RAM. What kind is it? Is it an integrated type that only uses system RAM?

It is normal for 32-bit Windows to only see 3.2GB of RAM.

Most 32-bit applications will only get to use 2GB unless they are especially written to use a special Windows mode that gives them 3GB.

The same programs on 64-bit Windows can get upto 4GB.

Such programs are few and far between.

The real benefits of 64-bit Windows only come with 64-bit applications and then only if they are written in the right way to be able to use more than 4GB.

I've been using 32-bit Vista Ultimate extensively without any issues since Nov 2006. I have used 64-bit, too, and found it to be just as stable but not of much benefit since all my apps are 32-bit.

Just stay with 32-bit Ultimate (for now, at least).