Memory and 32 bit Vista Home Premium

So now that I have a new portable hard drive and a new internal hard drive, I might as well move on to memory. I have four slots for memory in my Insprion 530 and two are filled with 1GB each. I know I need to add in pairs so I figured two more at 1GB would give me 4GB of memory and it's relatively inexpensive.

The issue I have is that I have 32 bit Vista Home Premium. I heard it only supports 3GB memory. Is that true?

If so, and I need to add in pairs, what would be the difference if I added two 512 MB and made it 3 GB overall. Can I do that? Would it make a difference between 2 and 3GB of memory?

I wouldn't want to waste (although it isn't really much difference in price) an entire GB of memory if 32 bit Vista won't use it.

I am pretty sure the memory I have is 800mhz. Would 667mhz work too? I am just curious on this...

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.


***I did read the other thread on memory but it doesn't exactly answer my questions.

Hmmm... That's a good question. Actually I have vista 32 and 4gb of memory but I've never actually looked into whether vista is using it. I do know that it recognizes that I have four gigs of ram though. When I bought this pc I just threw the ram from the old one in and didn't think anything about it. Another thing to consider is even though vista might not recognize anything over 3gig doesn't necessarily mean the programs you run on it won't. Programs like Adobe suite, and games might be able to use the whole 4 gigs so if that's the case the extra memory would be worth it. Now I don't know if this is actually how it works but it makes sense. I do know that once I added the extra memory to mine the games I play ran A LOT smoother. Sorry I couldn't be much help.

Dell Insiron 530 has 4 memory slots.
Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-5300,DDR2 PC2-6400 with a maximum of 1GB per slot.

Vista Memory Specs

Crucial Inspiron 530

Quote:

Originally posted by ev1l0ne

Dell Insiron 530 has 4 memory slots.
Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-5300,DDR2 PC2-6400 with a maximum of 1GB per slot.

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Sweet, thanks man!

Quote:

Originally posted by sookyjumps

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Sweet, thanks man!

I think that is right its either 3gb or 3.5 and your just fine with 4gb

Quote:

Originally posted by ev1l0ne

Dell Insiron 530 has 4 memory slots.
Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-5300,DDR2 PC2-6400 with a maximum of 1GB per slot.

[ Link ]

[ Link ]

I just ordered the 2GB kit (2X1GB) from the link you supplied. It was actually cheaper than the place I was about to buy them from so thanks for that.

I appreciate the feedback and help. I am pretty sure Vista will only allow me to use 3.3GB of memory because it is the 32 bit version (it said 4 in the link above but you have to read the asterisk). Hopefully my other programs will use it though.

As always thanks for everyone's help. I appreciate you guys.

It will support 4 GB total memory. That includes physical RAM as well as video RAM. This is a limitation of 32 bit operating systems overall with regards to addressable memory (2^32 = 4,294,967,296). It should not cause any issues to have more than 4 GB total, it just won't use it.

Quote:

Originally posted by rocknthefreeworld

It will support 4 GB total memory. That includes physical RAM as well as video RAM. This is a limitation of 32 bit operating systems overall with regards to addressable memory (2^32 = 4,294,967,296). It should not cause any issues to have more than 4 GB total, it just won't use it.

Yeah it's just a bummer to see that you only have 3.3 GB of physical memory when you expected 4 GB. That's all...

Windows 32bit can only support up to 3GB of memory. If there is an additional gig in there that is fine but windows is not able to utilize it.

Stupid 32 bit Vista.

Well at least the memory was cheap. I am scared of switching to a new OS because I am a sissy like that.

I feel comfortable using "the man's" software.

Sweet thread, thx

sorry guys i now im slow here

and just catching up to the times

and i already miss my old laptop but ill get over it

but i just got a new laptop and im have trouble getting the videos on wbw to play
i have down loaded dix codes and i run fire fox
but when i click on a video all i see is the clips on the left and nothing on the right
and when i click the down load it down loads in to fire fox this is the only why i can watch them
and im on the fefe server
any advice on this
am i missing something or did i do something wrong thanks for any help

I'm thinking about getting 4 more gigs of DDR3 RAM for my Vista Ultimate x64 system. I feel like 8 Gb is slightly overkill, but I like to game and design... and it's so cheap right now!

Quote:

Originally posted by tequila64

sorry guys i now im slow here

and just catching up to the times

and i already miss my old laptop but ill get over it

but i just got a new laptop and im have trouble getting the videos on wbw to play
i have down loaded dix codes and i run fire fox
but when i click on a video all i see is the clips on the left and nothing on the right
and when i click the down load it down loads in to fire fox this is the only why i can watch them
and im on the fefe server
any advice on this
am i missing something or did i do something wrong thanks for any help

Tequila64,

Do you have Adobe Flasg Player plug0in installed? If not follow this link and install and see if this helps.

Allow me to set this straight....

A 32 bit system can only address 3.5GB. Don't ask why, your brain will hurt, but that is the limit for ANY 32 bit system.

Windows XP can only utilize 3.0GB. As for Vista 32bit, I am not sure, but it isn't more than 3.5GB.

A 64bit system can address, uhm, something like 16HB. That's hexabytes, or in layman's terms, a metric fuck load.

If you don't know what difference 3GB can make over 2GB, you won't ever notice it anyway. You will never use it unless you really tax the system... like giving your video card an extra 1024bytes with Rivatuner and OC'ing the... Try FASTER RAM, not more.

As for Exhibitionist... You won't likely use your 4GB even gaming... mostly you need a good GPU, but unless you are running a game via Windows, emulated in VMWare, running in Linux... you don't need it. Or if you like to run multiple virtual machines at once and need to allocate multiple gigs of RAM to each... but I lost you a while ago, so don't worry about extra RAM for your PC. Want a little reality? Vista 64 runs SLOWER than XP Pro 32 EVEN ON A 64BIT SYSTEM.

The game you are running is most likely a 32 bit program, which Vista must still run at 64 bit, which slows it down.... since most programs are still 32 bit, and because Microsoft is fucking retarded, Vista runs like an old Yugo. With a blown head gasket.

Nighty night.