Usable RAM

[johnbarry]

I have

Will all 7.88GB be used, I ask as in the past forumites have said (maybe XP) only 3-4GB is used.

Is it pointless having 8GB RAM

Cheers
John

[Ed P]

The Windows OS now ‘tries’ to make use of available RAM (if the software can make use of it.). If you have Chrome on your PC it will gobble the lot! 4-8GB for the average user is thought to be OK, but others need much more. link

Windows nasty Photo app will gobble huge amounts when indexing especially if you have a lot of photos.

[The Duke]

Windows will eat everything, but doesn’t mean you need a lot. For most people 8 is fine, for a gamer 16 is nice. And anything over that is a waste unless you know you need it.

Usally media editors. Or people that runs lots of simulations or runs many vms. Then put in as much as you need.

I think it was the win7 days was the last time I worried about ram.

[johnbarry]

Thanks Ed n Duke and for the link.

I should be ok with 8 reading your suggestions.

Cheers
John

[Alan Wood]

The RAM restriction to less than 4GB only ever applied to a 32 bit version of Windows. The 64 bit never had that restriction

[The Duke]

Alan makes a good point. (I forgot) 32 bit windows maxes out at 4gb. So if it’s 32nit 4 is your limit. If its 64bit I think it’s 128gb (may of changed) but I’m sure your mobo will have a limit lower than that lol.

Older ones would be 8 to 16gb. Just have a quick look in the user manual or the net.

 

But given you have such an exact number of 7. 88gb I’d say its in, and showing up. So your good to go.

[Dave Rice]

You can have issues with some ram combinations, usually with older bioses. I have a laptop where whatever combination of 2 x 4GB sticks is shown in the BIOS as 8GB but Windows only gave a usable amount of 6GB, sometimes less. That was actually down to the combination of single sided and double sided sticks and so was the hardware not Windows despite what thew hardware was stating.

[Bob Williams]

I had the same issue with my current Mobo at setup, Dave. Tried (4×2) Gb in 4 slots, no go. Swapped* for (2×4) Gb in matching slots: no problem. Rarely use anywhere near the full 8GB (or 7.88, whatever) though, unless working with graphics or photos.

*Thank you Corsair!

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[johnbarry]

Thanks all, so it’s more the 32-64bit than the OS name

and also the hardware combination.

Cheers
John

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Windows 7 64bit Home editions used to limit you to 16GB of Ram but it was purely a licencing issue. They stopped that sillyness with 8.1

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Am I getting a feeling that you do not like the Windows Photo App Ed ? ??

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

I found out about the memory limit removal when I briefly installed 18GB  of RAM and all of it showed up as available. That also proves that my MoBo does memory remapping properly or some of it would have gone missing due to memory mapped device I/O.

[Ed P]

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Am I getting a feeling that you do not like the Windows Photo App Ed ?

I loathe it, but unfortunately there is no way of uninstalling it.

What I most dislike is that it uses a ‘greedy spposedly’ ‘background’ memory allocation and i/o stack that does not give way gracefully when I am starting up VMs.

[Tippon]

Ed P wrote:

I loathe it, but unfortunately there is no way of uninstalling it.

IOBit Uninstaller seems to shift it. I haven’t had a chance to check if it actually does yet though.

[Author]

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