On Sat, 1 May 2010, maccrawj wrote:
Differing amounts of "memory hole" from differing configurations would be my
guess before blaming a bug.
This.
4GB of memory is the max you can have between anything.
Got an oldass video card that uses only 32MB of memory? You'll have more
usable main memory than if you have 2x768MB NVidia's (In which case you'd
be down by 1.5GB or have only 2.5G show up.
This isn't rocket science.
Anything that uses addressable memory needs to fit within the 32bit range.
Modem with 32k? Fit into the 32 bit range. PCI SATA adaptor with a
cache? Needs to fit in the 32bit range. New Fangled Video card with 1GB
of memory? Needs to fit in the 32bit range.
All of those things take away from the 4GB hard cap on 32bit systems.
This can be programically sidestepped with kernel programming, very
similarly to how dos used to work with highmem.
http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/119287
Windows PAE has a lot of artificial limitations in place, put there by
Microsoft.
Windows XP is software limited to 4GB of memory
Windows Vista is software limited to 4GB of memory
Windows 7 is also software limited to 4GB of memory
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28v=VS.85%29.aspx
It has been shown that Vista at least uses the same codebase as Server
2008 and can have some DLL's switched to enable higher memory limits, so
it is definitely a programming decision, and one that is likely explained
by the following:
Drivers need to understand PAE in order to function without issue. MS
knew that hardware programmers can barely get a regular driver working, so
adding more trouble to a 32bit system when they have a 64bit solution
available is not worth it.
I agree with that. If you have a 64bit processor you should have a 64bit
OS.
Christopher Fisk
--
<SwifT> many; we have bugreports asking us to fix the docs on the cds
<SwifT> i fixed/invalid them because they're fixed online, and they reopen
stating it's still wrong on their cd
<SwifT> *sigh*
