AM2 operating system

[rojo_nerd]

Have noticed that all the boards which support this also support multiples of 4 gb of RAM....so where is the mainstream operating system that can utilise this and where are the 4gb DDR2 ram chips in the mass market? It seems to me that affordable hardware capability is way ahead of mainstream operating systems: if any company wanted to attack MS's domination know is the time to do so.

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

Although Microsoft did hurt their OS a little bit in terms of memory addressing, 4 GB is a limitation of 32-bit architecture, not programming. Microsoft's Windows Professional x64 Edition is capable of addressing much more than it's 32-bit version.

- x64 supports up to 128 GB of RAM (your motherboard would most likely limit you to less though)
- x64 supports up to 16TB of virtual memory
- x64 supports up to 1 terabyte of system cache

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/top10.mspx



So to answer your question:

where is the mainstream operating system that can utilise this and where are the 4gb DDR2 ram chips in the mass market?

It's called Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
-or- the upcoming Windows Vista

Now, in terms of the 4gb ram modules, you don't need them. Name me one thing you want to do that uses more than 2gb of RAM. Anything more than 4gb would seem to be grossly excessive and of no benefit.