4GB of RAM on 32bit by doing a Physical Address Extension

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discboy321

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So I was in a gaming forum and there is a feller there that claims you can get you motherboard to read more than "4GB of RAM on 32bit by doing a Physical Address Extension" ? Has anyone else read this before ? I am not sure what he is talking about so I thought I would ask in here. Thanks in advance for all the help I have gotten over the yrs of building computers.
 
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I'm half tempted to close this now. This has lead to a lot of fights before...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Microsoft Windows implements PAE if booted with the appropriate option, but current 32-bit desktop editions enforce the physical address space within 4 GB even in PAE mode. According to Geoff Chappell, Microsoft limits 32-bit versions of Windows to 4 GB as a matter of its licensing policy,[5] and Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich says that some drivers were found to be unstable when encountering physical addresses above 4 GB

Look at the chart farther down, none of MS's current OS's support PAE allowing greater then 4GBs. In addition to drivers, I think I heard some programs have...

4745454b

Titan
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I'm half tempted to close this now. This has lead to a lot of fights before...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Microsoft Windows implements PAE if booted with the appropriate option, but current 32-bit desktop editions enforce the physical address space within 4 GB even in PAE mode. According to Geoff Chappell, Microsoft limits 32-bit versions of Windows to 4 GB as a matter of its licensing policy,[5] and Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich says that some drivers were found to be unstable when encountering physical addresses above 4 GB

Look at the chart farther down, none of MS's current OS's support PAE allowing greater then 4GBs. In addition to drivers, I think I heard some programs have issues with it on as well. Frankly, in this day and age with 64bit windows as supported as it is I'd just install that. Not worth the the PAE hassles.

Warning for anyone wanting to come in and start crap. Just don't.
 
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There are various articles and opinions regarding this; from what I gathered, Microsoft has imposed this limit to client versions of 32bit OS.
I guess the more practical question is, are you willing to put up with the instability while running various programs? It's an interesting theoretical point, but I'll leave it at that.
 

discboy321

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After chatting more in the gaming forum you are right " 4745454b" you can go ahead and close this or put a posty note to where readers can read further. Also "house70" there are a lot of programs that are unstable and that is why they have 64bit.
 
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