If anyone is computer searching, do NOT purchase a Windows XP or Vista machine with more than 3GB of ram. Infact, 3GB may be a waste.

The operating system doesn't have the ability to use more than about 2.3GB, depending on the size of video memory within the system.

I can explain the WHY's later if interested. Basically, it's a huge scam and I urge you not be vulnerable.

Dell and other manufactures will gladly slip higher capacity modules into the system even though the system will not be able to use the memory banks. Of course, they profit off of the upgrade....

This is news? The limitation is that of a 32bit OS. Load the 64 bit version of either XP or Vista and your statement is out the window.

Actually the most that the 32 bit versions of Windows OS will report as present is more like 3.5 and then there are work arounds such as Physical Address Extensions.

Anyway, who seriously thinks they need more than 2 gig in a desktop system?

Will Dell ship you a system with more memory? Sure they will. Just like any other business. Why would you expect them not to? However, none of their standard configurations of a system with a 32 bit OS is any higher than 4GB. Most start at 1 or 2.

Why 4? Ever try to put 3 GB in?

Now if someone configures their system online and orders the box with 6 or 8 GB, do you really expect Dell to say "Whoa! Hold on there Tex! You really don't want that now do you?"

Scam? Where's the scam?

If you come to me and want to buy a pile of dirt out of my back yard, I will quote you a price. Not like I went around advertising that it was something other than what it is.

Informing people that getting more than 2GB of memory in a Wintell box is not the best expenditure of funds is all well and good if it makes you feel better. But there is no need for inflammatory comments while you are at it.

PAE support was included on XP and XP SP1 ... but caused way too many driver problems so it went away in SP2 for stability. Not 100% sure it's fair to say that's nature of 32 bit OS's because it can support more with PAE, which is how server versions are configured.

I pointed it out because many do NOT understand this. I've been computer shopping recently for a couple of folks, my stepdad (already bought) and my grandma (purchasing in a couple weeks). I've been amazed at the marketing scam BS about the 4 GB upcharge. One machine I looked at on Dell's site said "Dell Recommends you upgrade to 4GB for maximum performance". Are you freaking serious? That's a scam.

Correct me if i'm wrong but Windows used to show the amount of usable ram. Then the OEMs got Microsoft to change it to "installed ram". That SCREAMS scam. IMHO.

Beware buyers!!

PS: Are you saying 2 2GB chips are more balanced an 2GB and 1GB chip even tho only 3GB's are accessible from the OS?

Take a chill pill. Getting so worked up over small stuff is not healthy.

This the first time you've ever encountered advertising that intends to maximize profits at the expense of uninformed customers?

Taken literally, Dell's statement is completely valid. Just about all MBs require mem modules to be installed in pairs. Not sure I've ever seen a 1.5 Gig module. Thus my question about having ever tried installing 3 GB.

So from 2 GB, the next step up is to 4. You will not get all the bang for the buck, but it cannot be refuted that the system will make use of some of the extra mem, thus the "maximize performance" statement is true and valid.

No Scam whatever.

You can split hairs about the wasted 512 meg or so of mem, but I save getting worked up for more important things.

My point in case. A low-end model from Dell.



LMAO, that extra gig is literally fake.

Poor folks.

Admin???? DDR2 does not have to be installed in pairs?????

I feel bad for the uninformed. If most were buying a truck and they said it had a 6.8 V10 but in reality it only had a 5.4 boosted to old 6.8 V10 power, most would be hacked.

It's sleazy at best. Pardon me for trying to alert a few fellow board members who might benefit.

Made you smile, though none too kindly I think.

Guess I need to stop having a life and start reading Tom's Hardware again.

Hey at least this is more fun that anything on TV right now.

Now find a way for me to install that wasted memory in my old noggin and you will be doing this board member a huge benefit.

Dell is not the only one who likes to rip off customers.

Working around Apples inflated hardware upgrade prices

Excerpt

Apple's Santa Rosa based systems can support the FULL 4GB they are willing to offer. Before Santa Rosa based systems, they capped ram at 2gb to NOT scam their customers. In some systems, they outfitted PAE to be able to boost the ram capacity. While I do agree Apple is price happy on their ram, it's not nearly the scam as Dell's (and others!) bogus. Do I wish the upgrade cost was less? You bet. One thing is certain though, they are not recommending a BS amount of memory that is not supported. They might charge a larger-than-normal amount for the upgrade but at least they're not deceptive about it.

D

PS: When I ordered my Mac about 15 months ago, I took the base ram offering and went with a 3rd party upgrade. It was easy to change and ultimately saved me about $40 after selling the old ram on Ebay.

I build my own systems and have the 64 bit version of windows and 64 fx amd processor. I have 3 gig installed along with sata raid dual drives along with a stand along 200g usb hd. As far as memory being a scam it completely depends on the software and not the operating system. If the software you are running allows windows to manage the memory then you are correct 2 gig is plenty , but if you use stuff like I do such as cad, corel draw and designer and also some simulation software associated with waste-water plant design, these programs manage the memory them selves and the more you have the more it will use and the faster. Corel draw for years has been a problem in this area due to the fact that it will continue to allocate memory as you go and no clear it with out restarting. Extra memory also allows you to cache more video memory and other resources that would normally cashed to the hard drive. Gaming also will see a huge increase in memory usage. The reason for this type of info passing around is that after 2 gig you don't see much a increase in performance under normal circumstances, but if choose to mange memory then the increase does speed it up. Remember it's not the mother board that is the problem its the monitor, hard drives and other external devices that slow things down. [b][/b]please read the following quote from PC Magazine!

The issue with either Windows XP or 32-bit Vista really isn't the OS itself, but the legacy of the old IBM PC. The BIOS reserves a certain amount of memory for memory-mapped I/O. Still, even Win XP could "see" well over 3GB of RAM. It and 32-bit Vista do support something known as PAE (physical address extension), which allows applications written for PAE to use more than 2GB of memory.

However, Vista itself likes having more than 2GB of RAM. The reason is SuperFetch, the smart caching technology built into Vista. SuperFetch will happily use excess memory to help speed up disk access by keeping frequently used data cached in memory. So having more than 2GB is of greater benefit in Vista than in Win XP.

Nah...a real scam would also offer an 8GB RAM option

This is just to add some more to think about. One of the reasons I moved over to amd from intel is because of memery management along with how windows has been developed with windowns in mind. The following info is from the amd site.

http://forums.amd.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=11&threadid=95166&enterthread=y

Both Windows XP 32-bit and Windows Vista 32-bit operating systems are limited to a 4GB total address space. That's not an artificial limit chosen by Microsoft, it's the nature of binary numbers. (You can determine the total address space available in any binary digital system by raising 2 to the bits power. For example, 2^32bits = 4,294,967,296 bits = 4GB.) Of that 4GB total address space, 2GB are directly available to the user, while up to 2GB are reserved by Windows. Note that the memory itself isn't being used, just the address space, but if you're excluded from the address space, you're excluded from the physical memory as well.

The reserved 2GB of memory are used to map...

* System BIOS (including motherboard, add-on cards, etc..)
* Motherboard resources
* Memory mapped I/O
* Configuration for AGP/PCI-Ex/PCI
* Other memory allocations for PCI devices



Due to this reservation of address space, systems with 4GB of physical memory installed often report anywhere from 2.5 to a little over 3GB of available, user usable memory depending on total system overhead. In contrast, both XP 64 and Vista 64 (Business Edition and up) can directly address up to 128GB of physical memory.

--

The /PAE (Physical Address Extension) and/or the /3GB (4-Gigabyte Tuning) boot.ini switches may allow you to use more of your memory.

PAE is a feature of Intel Pentium Pro and above, and compatible 3rd party (AMD) CPUs. PAE changes the addressing scheme used by Windows, allowing up to 64GB of physical memory to be mapped into a 32-bit (4GB) virtual address space. By making more physical memory available, PAE may reduce the need to swap memory to and from the page file, thereby improving performance. PAE also enables certain other system and processor features, so it can be used for reasons other than memory management. CPUID flag PAE indicates a particular CPU's PAE capability.

/3GB (4-Gigabyte Tuning) increases the virtual address space available to applications from 2GB to 3GB, and reduces the amount available to the OS to 1GB. 4-Gigabyte Tuning is most commonly used on servers hosting memory intensive applications. In order for an application to utilize the additional memory, the application process header must include the IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag. You don't get any benefits from just dropping "/3GB" into the boot.ini file.

--

Physical Memory Limits: 32-bit Windows XP Version
Limit in 32-bit Windows Limit in 64-bit Windows
Windows XP . 4GB 128GB

Limit in 32-bit Windows........Limit in 64-bit Windows
Windows Vista Ultimate
...............4GB.............128GB
Windows Vista Enterprise
...............4GB.............128GB
Windows Vista Business
...............4GB.............128GB
Windows Vista Home Premium
...............4GB..............16GB
Windows Vista Home Basic
...............4GB...............8GB

[b][/b][u][/u] These are the facts.

XP will be fine (more than fine) with 2 GB of memory. If you want to soup it up, jack up the processor to the ones with the higher amounts of L2 cache.

I recently got some at work. . . quad core with 12 mb of L2. . . rocket ships compared to a duo core w/ 2 MB cache.

I run DDR3 memory. Is this any better than DDR2?

DDR3 has higher bandwidth and speed than DDR3, but as I posted above it will not do much unless you need it. I can attribute this to a 68 corvette I owned with the 427 4 speed, ya it was fast but I could never jump on real hard because it could tear the cv joints out, so could it go faster yes, did I need, no except for cruising on friday nights.