0

Possible Duplicate:
Memory sticks, 32 and 64 Bit OS

Will Windows 7 32 bit edition support 8 GB RAM? or it will only support 4 GB.

Will i have to buy 64 bit version if i want to use 8 GB RAM?

Community
  • 1
metal gear solid
  • 8,802
  • 55
  • 119
  • 182

1 Answers1

3

32-bit operating systems only support up to 4GB (actually less) of RAM. So yes, you will have to get the 64-bit version of Windows to use 8GB of RAM.

There are some hacky ways to enable more than 4GB of memory on a 32-bit machine, though. For example, you can use PAE (Physical Address Extension), but that's slower than simply installing a 64-bit OS. There is a kernel patch that enables this for Windows 7, but I wouldn't recommend it: it's risky and not worth the trouble when you can just install the 64-bit version of Windows.

Community
  • 1
Sasha Chedygov
  • 6,939
  • 12
  • 48
  • 55
  • 1
    Read the PAE article you linked. 32-bit OSes most certainly can use more than 4 GB of RAM. Also, x86-64 adds an extra level of page table indirection over PAE. It's in no way "faster" than PAE. It's also not appreciably slower. It may be possible to detect in a microbenchmark, but it certainly won't involve a perceptible performance hit. Same with PAE enabled vs PAE disabled. What's more, PAE is almost always enabled on current systems because it's required for [NX](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_bit) support. – afrazier May 14 '10 at 03:28
  • @afrazier: +1 for insight :) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx – akira May 14 '10 at 07:21
  • @afrazier: look at the [benchmark](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_32_pae&num=1) and you'll see that PAE will be much slower than x64 – phuclv Aug 29 '13 at 09:57
  • 32-bit x86 OSes can certainly use more than 4GB of RAM with PAE. However, normal consumer Windows are limited to 4GB even if they're running under PAE. That's just because of licensing problem. Only 32-bit server Windows can use more than 4GB. But new Windows server have no 32-bit versions though. 64-bit Windows is certainly the way to go – phuclv Jun 12 '14 at 02:24