Windows 10, 64bit OS memory question


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I'm starting to show my age. I used to be "in the know" on tech but as I've gotten older, I'm way out of the loop. I need you folks to help me here. My daughter Dominique, asked me about my sons PC, a system I bought back in 2004, with an AMD 64 Processor.

 

Somewhere in the conversation, I got to speaking about Ram. Where I got lost was, talking about "if there were a Ram ceiling" on the 64bit OS? I remembered the 32bit OS could only recognize up to 2GB of Ram. (back in the 32bit OS days, they couldn't conceive Ram > 2GB back then. Does anyone know?

 

Q: Is there a ceiling with the 64 bit OS? personally I'd say yes at some point. which? no idea. But we can't see now having systems that require 1TB on a consumer PC. Enterprise? -yes.

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32 bit can run up to 4 GB. I'm not aware of the exact cap for 64 (2^64?), but it is insanely higher than you'll need to bother with and is dependent on a number of variables.

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The theoretical limit is 16.8 million terabytes. The limit in Windows 10 Home is 128GB, and 512GB for Pro and Enterprise.

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Just now, Jub Fequois said:

The theoretical limit is 16.8 million terabytes. The limit in Windows 10 Home it's 128GB, and 512GB for Pro and Enterprise.

16.8 million terabytes? good gravy. call of duty using 12 million terabytes... in future terms.. insane.

 

Thanks guys for the answer. Dominique was reading your replies with me.

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17 minutes ago, chrisj1968 said:

16.8 million terabytes? good gravy. call of duty using 12 million terabytes... in future terms.. insane.

 

Thanks guys for the answer. Dominique was reading your replies with me.

Here is a page that gives information about it in case your daughter is interested in reading it:

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_10

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You'll probably be limited by your processor and not the OS @ 64-bit. Haswell-E's max is 64GB I believe. For more than that you'll need to go Xeon or dual processor board.

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@TAZMINATOR that's still insane. but I don't foresee using 128GB now but.. I'm sure that number will increase over time. maybe not in my lifetime.

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The exact value allowed by the processor hardware will depend on what sort of memory you're talking about: virtual or physical. As far as I know, no x64 processor today offers the full 64-bit address space; they allow a 48-bit virtual address space and a 48-bit physical address space (256 TB). Older x64 processors (probably the one in your 2004 PC would fit this description) only allowed a 40-bit physical address space.

When it comes to the virtual address space available for each 64-bit process in Windows, it will be a total of 256 TB split 50/50 between user and kernel space (starting in Windows 8.1).

When it comes to physical RAM limits for Windows, it's limited by each edition. The limit is 128 GB for Win10 Home and 2 TB for everything else.

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41 minutes ago, MorganX said:

You'll probably be limited by your processor and not the OS @ 64-bit. Haswell-E's max is 64GB I believe. For more than that you'll need to go Xeon or dual processor board.

yep..^ this.  The newer Broadwell-E's (like the i7-6800K) allow 128GB.  Anyway, with the latest 64 bit Windows ... as a home user .... you're almost always going to be limited by your hardware.  Even Windows 8 Home was like 128GB I believe ... which was substantially more than the 16GB allowed by 7 Home Premium.

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Just now, jjkusaf said:

yep..^ this.  The newer Broadwell-E's (like the i7-6800K) allow 128GB.  Anyway, with the latest 64 bit Windows ... as a home user .... you're almost always going to be limited by your hardware.  Even Windows 8 Home was like 128GB I believe ... which was was substantially more than the 16GB allowed by 7 Home Premium.

Pretty much - that has historically been the case with Windows NT-based OSes; memory, storage, etc.

Back when I was running Windows 2000 (as a home OS), I went all the way to a gigabyte of RAM; today, I have only eight times that much on my desktop, but I do a crapton more.  I'm looking to double that (16GB) - and I'll promptly bounce off the memory ceiling (motherboard limitation - not OS limitation; I have only two DDR3 DIMM slots).  Here's the REAL shocker - 16GB in a 2x8 pair is still typically between $60USD and $70USD - retail; shopping online can drop that by between $5USD and $10USD typically (not including tax OR shipping).

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5 minutes ago, xendrome said:

chris, are you actually running Windows 10 on that system? I don't think the CPU supports the instruction set necessary to operate.

He may respond in a week or two>>?

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22 minutes ago, xendrome said:

chris, are you actually running Windows 10 on that system? I don't think the CPU supports the instruction set necessary to operate.

Good point ... that system will probably be relegated to the 32-bit Windows 10 flavor.  Not entirely sure when AMD started implementing CMPXCHG16b into their processors...but the early AMD64's didn't have it.

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1 hour ago, chrisj1968 said:

I'm starting to show my age. I used to be "in the know" on tech but as I've gotten older, I'm way out of the loop. I need you folks to help me here. My daughter Dominique, asked me about my sons PC, a system I bought back in 2004, with an AMD 64 Processor.

 

Somewhere in the conversation, I got to speaking about Ram. Where I got lost was, talking about "if there were a Ram ceiling" on the 64bit OS? I remembered the 32bit OS could only recognize up to 2GB of Ram. (back in the 32bit OS days, they couldn't conceive Ram > 2GB back then. Does anyone know?

 

Q: Is there a ceiling with the 64 bit OS? personally I'd say yes at some point. which? no idea. But we can't see now having systems that require 1TB on a consumer PC. Enterprise? -yes.

You have already seen that 64 bit = more RAM than you can actually buy and plug into your computer.

 

With 32 bit, your 2 gig was a bit closer than the inaccurate 4 gig replies you received.

 

The O/S recognizes about 3.5 gig in 32 bit, but the most any program can have is 2 gig.

 

64 bit programs run about 10% faster and use up about 30% more memory so the main advantage of 64 bit is removing the ceiling. Until you hit the ceiling, 32 bit is more efficient.

 

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