64-bit question

I have, at last, got round to buying a new laptop (1). It'sonly Medion
but seemed well specced for the price (4). What seems strange to me is
that they've supplied a 4gb machine with 32-bit w7 installed but a
disk for the 64-bit version in the box. So I have the choice of
leaving it as is and not fully utilising the memory or re-installing
w7, with all the faff that might entail.

The question is: would it be worth the effort to go 64-bit? Others
who've done it on this machine have found it a bit problematic. Would
it be possible/worth partitioning and running both systems to compare
how they run or in case something goes belly up?

 

Bad form and all that - I deleted the notes but not the references.
Too much wine.

 

Do you want to use the whole 4GB? 32bit Windows won't let you.

If not, you might as well not bother - the only reason to use a 64bit OS
is to get round 32bit memory limitations.

If you do, then go ahead. The worst you'll find is some weird bit of
hardware doesn't have a 64bit driver.

 

Wotogdensaid ...

Son had the same dilemma, but he needed to run Adobe Maya and other
higher-end applications for 3d modelling so it made sense for him to go
64 bit. He's had no problems at all with it, though his is a HP, not a
Medion,

 

What? Windows 7 32bit can't use 4gig? I thought that was the upper limit.
What can it use then?

 

My thinkpad is 64 bit out of the box, only issues i have had where a couple
of non-64 version software apps.

--


Nige,

'Candygram for Mongo'

R1

 

It can use 4gig, but will only make 2gig available to applications,
unless you add the /3gb switch to the boot.ini.

 

They should work fine, unless they're really, really old & have 16-bit
installers.

 

Plus a 32 bit OS can only address a maximum of 4GB, so some of the RAM
is unusable due to bits of the 4GB address space instead being mapped
to video cards, etc. Expect to actually get 3.25 GB RAM usable for
apps on a 32 bit OS.

 

about 3.5. the bios and hardware needs about half a gig to cover I/O, DMA
stuff and the ROMS that the actual cards (sound cards, graphics card,
network cards, etc) have on board.

There's a workaround though, you need to switch on something called PAE
(paged address extension) that splits te memory into pages, allowing access
to the full ram, just not all at once, though the OS should hide that from
the user.
--
| |What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack|
| |in the ground beneath a giant boulder, which you|
| |can't move, with no hope of rescue. |
| Andrew Halliwell BSc |Consider how lucky you are that life has been |
| in |good to you so far... |
| Computer Science | -The BOOK, Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy.|

 

3.25GB in Windows x86

Still doesn't let any one app use the whole lot though.

 

True, but it's the best option 32 bitters have. Either that or lose access
to everything above the 3.5gig mark.
--
| |What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack|
| |in the ground beneath a giant boulder, which you|
| |can't move, with no hope of rescue. |
| Andrew Halliwell BSc |Consider how lucky you are that life has been |
| in |good to you so far... |
| Computer Science | -The BOOK, Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy.|

 

Thanks for the reply. It seems a bit daft to have 4 and not use it. It
seems very daft that Medion didn't ship it like that.

 

Well, it seems that this is all going to be a bit over my head. If I
use PAE am I likely to see an improvement in performance?

Here's something else. I think this laptop uses onboard graphics
normally but swaps to the nvidia card as apps demand. It is supposed
to have 1GB of dedicated memory but also accesses system RAM. Under
performance information the PC says the following:
Display adapter type NVIDIA GeForce GT 425M
Total available graphics memory 1434 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 64 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 1370 MB

Now I have no idea why it reports only 64MB dedicated but I'll worry
about that later. My question is whether it might be possible to
dedicate, say, 1GB of system memory to graphics, leaving the 3GB for
the system to use? Or would it then leave only 2.5 available to the
system?

 

IIRC PAE only work if you have more than 4GB of memory and the
applications you're running support it. I'm not even sure if Windows 7
supports it as its a server thing.

 

No. Not in the slightest.

Beware people claiming to have a BSc in Computer Science - it's no
guarantee they have any idea what they're on about.

PAE is _Physical_ Memory Extension. It extends the memory address space
from 32bit (4GB) to 36bit (64GB) but only for the OS, not applications.
The OS then has more memory to dish out to apps, but the apps aren't PAE
aware so still have the 32bit limit (4GB). You not only need more than
4GB in the host machine, but also an OS that supports PAE effectively,
such as Windows Server (Enterprise Edition and above).

Since you only have 4GB, and a workstation OS, PAE won't give you any
benefit.

My approach is to always go 64bit unless there's a specific reason not
to. Typically odd hardware with crap drivers or apps that simply don't
work (or aren't vendor-supported) on a 64bit host. Modern server
versions of Windows don't even come in a 32bit flavour anymore, which
should hint at the way the wind's blowing.

Pass. I don't usually deal with workstations or anything with fancy
video cards.

 

It's about how much the CPU can actually see that's the issue.
Without PAE, it sees 4gig, that's all it's capable of addressing and why I/O
and other stuff gets in the way when you have 4 gig of RAM in. That's what
32bit means. 32 bits = 2^32 which equals 4gigs.

The cpu can't see the full RAM *AND* the I/O stuff. (and the system needs
the I/O stuff to function so blocks out the excess RAM).

 

Never been a windows bod personally. I knew you could turn on PAE in some
older versions of windows so I assumed you could in 7.

And as for the "only if apps are written for it" thing, that's just
sloppiness on microsoft's part if true. PAE is an OS level thing, the
applications are shielded from it in things like linux.

--
| |What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack|
| |in the ground beneath a giant boulder, which you|
| |can't move, with no hope of rescue. |
| Andrew Halliwell BSc |Consider how lucky you are that life has been |
| in |good to you so far... |
| Computer Science | -The BOOK, Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy.|

 

Meeeeeeeowwwwwwwww

 

wrote:

If the cap fits...