Can I put 4 Gigs of RAM into my COMPUTER?/????

Question

I have an ASus a8n5x mobo 2 gigs of ram an amd 3800 and a 7600gt. can i put in another 2 gigs? someone told me that windows xp only supports 3gigs. and others have said that it supports 4gigs....im not sure. i have corsair xms ram. any thoughts??? id love to know from someone that has 4 gigs running.

Answer 1

Both windows XP and your motherboard have issues with 4GB of RAM. According to the manual for your motherboard the maximum appears to be 4 GB with the following limitations:

Due to chipset resource allocation the system may detect less and 4 GB of system memory when you installed (sic) four 1 GB DDR memory modules.

Due to CPU limitation, DIMM modules with 128 MB memory chips or double sided x16 memory chips are not supported in this motherboard.

As for windows XP, it can address a maximum of 4 GB of memory space. that includes video RAM and other devices within the system. Assuming your video card is at least 256 MB (more likely 512 MB?) then no your system will not be able to address all 4 GB, even though the system properties may list 4096 MB of RAM.

My advice, leave it with 2 GB.

Answer 2

Physically, you can put in 4 gig as long as your motherboard supports it.

But, NO, don't do it. In XP (32-bit), the most memory you can use is somewhere between 2 to 3 gig. The rest of them can only be accessed by the operating system.

So, you can do it, but instead of 4 gig, you will only have 2gig+ memory effectively... unless you are using the 64-bit version of XP. In the end, it would be just waste of money.

Wait until you have a 64-bit version of operating system; I am not too sure if even Vista 32-bit fixes that yet.

Answer 3

There are some great answers here already - the short of it is that Windows XP has a 4 GB total physical memory limit. 32 bit addressing ends at 4 GB, so Windows (and other some other operating systems) use addressing space at the top of the available memory and work their way down.

Those addresses are sub-divided to manage both the PCI memory address range (MMIO) and physical user memory (RAM). Starting at the top of the address range, the BIOS takes roughly the first 512K of the address range. Next, your graphics card(s) need addresses for at least the amount of memory on them. Then, other things like IO cards, networking, PCI-e, bus bridges, etc. take what they need. The net result is that a 32-bit OS on an x86-based pc may allocate 512M~1G (or more) for the MMIO range BEFORE any RAM addresses are allocated.

Say for example, you have (2) 512M video cards. All of that memory needs to be addressed before your RAM can be. Add in everything else I mentioned above and you'll probably wind up with roughly 2.5G of address range left for your RAM.

XP Pro x64 and Vista, being 64-bit OS's, resolve this limitation by using a 64-bit addressing scheme (not PAE - PAE is only used on win32) to re-map MMIO above the top of the physical memory. But ONLY if you're using a 64 bit chipset.

Check this page out - it has some GREAT information: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1035670

Answer 4

Ya dude u can put up 4 gigs of RAM but provided Ur Motherboard supports tat much... jus check in with the manufacturer if u can upgrade 2 gigs to 4 gigs on the same board...

Answer 5

It has 2 DIMM slots, and could be so ordinary as plugging in yet another ram-stick, as long as that's ddr1/2. It. utility-clever no, besides the undeniable fact that it in all probability does not harm to do an automated replace.

Answer 6

Why would you want more that about 1-2Gb of RAM unless you are running the PC as a server???

You can run 4Gb of RAM with XP, but I think it has to be XP Pro... I've seen PC's running that and more at work...

Answer 7

I have a friend who tells me that he just upgraded to 4 gigs ram and his machine is running just fine.

Be sure that the rest of your hardware can handle it first though.

Answer 8

NO SORRY