Vista 32bit

[Churchill]

Swap it out to where? And if you did swap it outside of the 4GB address space, the screen would go blank?

Get over it. What 1/2 gig lost anyways?

You're not familiar with the concept of "Bank Switching" then, eh?

Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.

Churchill - In "What do they teach kids these days" mode?

[voodooflux]

WHS. I was going to link to Raymond Chen's post, but Jeff links to it in that article, so no need

I did think about linking to Raymond Chen's article directly, Jeff has better pictures though

There's another good post on this over on Mark Russinovich's blog.

[VectraMan]

What I've never understood is this:

Each process has its own 4GB address space that's mapped onto real memory/swap file by the OS. So in theory a 32-bit OS could support a lot more than 4GB, but limiting each individual process to a maximum of 4GB, as long as the processor supported it (which I believe modern ones do with PAE) and the OS had enough bits in its mapping algorithm.

So why don't we have that?

[Churchill]

What I've never understood is this:

Each process has its own 4GB address space that's mapped onto real memory/swap file by the OS. So in theory a 32-bit OS could support a lot more than 4GB, but limiting each individual process to a maximum of 4GB, as long as the processor supported it (which I believe modern ones do with PAE) and the OS had enough bits in its mapping algorithm.

So why don't we have that?

Absolutely!

What about Windows 7, does that offer better support?

Also VMWare...?

[NickFitz]

You're not familiar with the concept of "Bank Switching" then, eh?

Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.

Churchill - In "What do they teach kids these days" mode?

Of course I am, which is why I referred to limitations of hardware architecture as well as the processor's addressing capabilities. The PC architecture doesn't support bank switching - at least not in any way that would allow you to have access to 4GB of RAM.

EDIT: Oops, just realised you were responding to _V_ - still, we were both making the same point, so I might as well let this one stand

[Swamp Thing]

Absolutely!

What about Windows 7, does that offer better support?

Also VMWare...?

What about upgrading to 64-bit Vista? Apparently that makes full use of 4gb main memory..

[PRC1964]

What about upgrading to 64-bit Vista? Apparently that makes full use of 4gb main memory..

*cough*

(Centrino Duo - so Vista 64bit is out!)

[stingman123]

Have you got EMM386 loaded in your config.sys?

Jesus, that statement just scared the knackers out of me!