Making use of more than 3GB system ram for games?

[badoosh]

I have a new computer with an i7 and 12GB system ram using Win 7 64 bit and had a question about how to utilize more than 3Gb system ram for games.

How can I make a game in 64 bit o/s use more system ram say 8GB instead of 3GB for better performance?

The game is Arma 2 Combined Operations.

 

[Herr_Koos]

The game will use as much RAM as it needs, no more, no less. You can't force it to do anything else.

Please list your complete system specs for reference.

 

[fowang]

for one most games are only 32bit and have a cap on how much ram they can use, when games go 64bit then they can use more ram.

 

[badoosh]

i7 950
12GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600 MHZ
WINDOWS 7 X64
EVGA X58 SLI LE MOBO
MSI HD 6950

 

[Herr_Koos]

With that system, the game should run just fine. Are you experiencing performance issues?

 

[geofelt]

All games are written for the 32 bit environment to maximize the marketplace. I know of no games that are written exclusively for the 64 bit environment, and none that have a 64 bit enhaancement for 32 bit games. Originally, 32 bits was a massive amount of ram. The os got half, and the user area got the other 2gb. Since the os does not really need more than 1gb, there are some mods to allow a game to use 3gb.

The value of 8gb or more comes from minimizing the interference from other tasks.

Here is a corsair study on the value of >4gb:
http://blog.corsair.com/?p=65

The other way you could use lots of ram would be to create a ramdisk, a superfast, small hard drive image.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

xeon w3520
24 gigs of ddr3
hd6850
win7 64 bit

never uses more than 3 gigs of ram on any game,but my cad does!!!!!

 

[geofelt]

xeon w3520
24 gigs of ddr3
hd6850
win7 64 bit

never uses more than 3 gigs of ram on any game,but my cad does!!!!!

I think photoshop can also, and there must be others. But no games that I know of. You would think there might be some coming .

 

[Hawkeye22]

Crysis had both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. I do remember one or two other games out there that were 64 bit, but I can't remember them now.