[AccessD] Using 4 gbytes of RAM

JWColby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Thu Aug 31 11:30:16 CDT 2006


Jim,

>I have never heard of a XP OS computer having more than a gig.

You obviously aren't a gamer.  Neither am I in fact but I do some serious
multi-tasking.  All of my machines have 2 gig in them right now with the
exception of my wife's laptop which only has 512 mbytes and definitely needs
more.  All machines currently run Windows XP32 with the exception of my
wife's which runs XP Home.

In the case of the laptops, the hardware is indeed the limit since the
laptops I have simply do not support more than 2 1gb sticks.

As for my "desktops", the latest that I built uses the Asus M2N32-SLI:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131011

With an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103735

And two sticks of Patriot eXtreme Performance 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820220142

This motherboard supports 4 1gb sticks, in fact they CLAIM to support 4 2gb
sticks.  Patriot claims that this motherboard will use 4 sticks of this 1gb
ram.  As for 2gb sticks, they are almost non-existant ATM but they are on
the way.

As for using other OSes I would like to.  I have the MS action pack which
includes various OSes although I screwed up and somehow got the disks
separated from their sleeves - the sleeves have the key on them, and the
product number on the disks NEVER match the product number on the sleeves -
but that is a discussion for another day.

I actually did use a different drive to load SBS 2003.  It was a PITA
because it wanted to do something on the net before I could even get the MB
drivers loaded, however I stopped the install (Waaaaaay before it was
finished it turns out), loaded the MB drivers which brought up the built in
LAN, then went back in to windows and started the install over.  It picked
up where it left off and finished.  At the very end it was asking for
something I just didn't understand and I decided to stop at that point and
punt since I needed to get this thing working and back to work.  I had
previously loaded a disk with Windows XP so I just swapped the disks and
continued to run XP.  BTW, this was last week BEFORE the oh so helpful SQL
Server Gurus on that list told me I had to be a Notwork and SQL Server guru
or I wasn't worth helping.  8-(

So I do have a disk sitting here with SBS 2003 pretty much loaded though it
wants something (don't remember what) that I wasn't prepared to give it.
Perhaps someday I can put it back in and see if you or someone here can help
me get it finished.  William has been pushing SBS 2003 as a platform for
some time and I thought it might be dead simple, but I guess I'm not quite
dead enough?

As for memory diagnostic, I have Memtest86 available.  It runs standalone
from a floppy, and I used it to help me OC this X2 3800.  I managed to push
it up from 2.0 GHz (clock speed) which AMD calls a 3.8ghz processor to about
2.45 GHz which (for the same core) AMD calls a 4.4+ GHz processor, while
keeping Memtest86 happy, or shall we say that it ran overnight with no
errors.  Any higher clock than that and Memtest would start throwing errors.
I'm not an overclocker, so a 20% oc with stability is just fine with me.
All of that is using the stock cooling fan as well.

Anyway, there you have it.  Given that this machine will be a dedicated SQL
Server, I thought I'd investigate putting another 2 gb in it, but before I
do so I want to know that it will be used.  

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Lawrence
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 10:59 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Using 4 gbytes of RAM

Hi John:

I have never heard of a XP OS computer having more than a gig. All other
systems using larger amounts of memory, that I am aquatinted with, are
servers of various kinds which are suppose to better at managing memory and
processes. Your limitations will definitely be the OS before the hardware.

I would recommend that you try Window 2003 server standard. It is totally
brain-dead to install; takes about an hour and a half to install (DVDs are
slow) and asks once whether you want to use it as a domain controller. I use
one as a work-station and its performance is head and shoulders above XP. It
is easier to manage and it definitely uses memory better.

Here is a free download that is supposed to do memory diagnostics app for
windows:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Memory-Tweak/Microsoft-Windows-Memory-Dia
gnostic.shtml

>From M$:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/msit/operations/mscom64bitarchi
.mspx

What type of motherboard do you have: ASUS, GigaByte ...?


Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of JWColby
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 7:05 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving';
dba-sqlserver at databaseadvisors.com; Tech - Database Advisors Inc.
Subject: [AccessD] Using 4 gbytes of RAM

Is anyone using a machine with more than two gig of Ram?  I am reading
things about doing this and there seems to be a lot of confusion on the
matter.  Much of the confusion seems to come from the fact that until the 64
bit versions of the X86 processors, the "internals" of the processor were
all 32 bits which limited direct generation of addresses to 4 gig.  All of
my machines are 64 bit (AMD) processors so theoretically they can use more
than 4 gig but how?
 
Everyone seems to agree that in XP32, only 4 gig is available to work with
and that things like video cards and other "machine stuff" eats into that.
Thus regardless of anything, you will end up with less than 4 gig due to
that, perhaps as little as 3.25 gig.  After that, confusion reigns, at least
in my mind.  
 
Understand that I am discussing Windows XP 32 specifically, although anyone
is welcome to chip in what they "know" regarding other windows versions as
long as they specify what version they are discussing.
 
The next thing that is discussed is that the OS itself reserves 2 gig for
itself (which includes the video etc AFAICT), leaving up to 2 gig for EACH
APPLICATION, implying that any application can have / use up to 2 gig.
 
Some claim that if you have 4 gig, the swap file won't be used since that is
part of the 4 gig available.  It seems illogical since each application can
use up to 2 gig.  However I have created a separate partition to hold my
swap file and tried to create one of 6 gig and Windows refused, limiting the
size of the swap file to 4 gig.  
 
So I am trying to figure out what the reality is.  If a machine has 4 gig
physical ram, and "machine stuff" uses (for argument's sake) .75 gig, is the
.75 gig of physical ram simply unused?  Is it used by the OS for buffers?
What about the swap file?  If you have a 4 gig swap file, would you have
7.25 "total available memory" for Windows use?  Does this indeed then limit
the APPLICATIONS to 5.25 gig of "total" memory and 2 gig of physical memory?
And what happens if you manage to get (for the sake of argument) 8 gig
stuffed into a machine.  Some motherboards claim to handle that much but can
Windows XP 32 actually use it?  
 
Can Windows XP 64?  If you need this much memory is Windows XP 64 a way to
get at the memory?  If you are still using 32 bit apps, will it actually map
as much as 2 gig of physical memory to the 32 bit apps so that (for example)
3 high powered memory hungry 32 bit apps actually had 2 gig available to
each of them all the time?
 
If anyone has run across any authoritive (on-line) reading on the subject I
would love to look at it.
 
John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com
 
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