vista and RAM

4gb is too expensive for realistic uses, stick with 2gb, u shud be fine for xp and vista

It is the 32bit barrier you are looking at. You will need to run the x64 version of vista to access more than 4gb. I am uncertain if they were able to get the full 4gb available in the 32bit version. but dell has the bios locked to only see 3.5gb i think right now anyway so who knows really...

2gb seems to be the popular choice right now. Well see if that changes with the onset of Vista.

Even the 32bit version of Vista has support for more than 4GB of RAM... the current E1705/M1710 BIOS only addresses 3.25GB... blame Dell

I'd say stick with 2 GB for now. As others have said, 4 GB is just too pricey.

I'm running Ultimate edition right now on a 4 year old Dell with 1 GB ram and it's doing well. Of course Gaming doesn't happen on this machine, but video and photo editing do. I can definitely see the benefit going to 2 GB but for the price right now 4 GB isn't worth it.

Also, you can always use ReadyBoost. Any fast USB key can supplement Vista system memory, not exactly like Ram but certainly better than a page file.

I am using a fast Sandisk Ultra II 2GB SD Card in the stock E1705 card reader and it makes a HUGE difference in Vista Ultimate. It definately makes for a very peppy upgrade and its rather cheap at that. Granted a fast external reader would make it much faster, its plenty fast with the onboard, and its out of sight out of mind.

Can you elaborate on this? Are you trying to say that Vista is hijacking flash ram for use as additional memory? At the very least it has gotten me thinking about how well a high speed SD card would work as a swap drive. Regardless, just some thoughts, and any info you could give would be appreciated.

Doug

Good question, ridiculous thread.
Who IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would double the price of their clam purchase for something that maybe, might be, Oh I dunno perhaps, I 'll use someday.
You couldn't make 2 gig RAM break a sweat with VISTA if you had 30 programs running at the same time.
If you can afford 4 gig RAM (double the price of the computer) you sure as hell don't need advice, you need an accountant.
Put this thread out of its misery now.

If you read the original post, you can see that the OP is running memory-intensive applications. Looking for ways to maximize available memory is quite legitimate in such a scenario. I might add that if you are using a software application the cost of which by itself is several times the cost of your laptop, you would certainly have no problem spending another few $k on the amount of memory to use the software to its full potential. That would depend on the applications one wants to run. Again, you might benefit from actually reading what the OP wrote. You can easily exhaust 2 gigs of RAM with a single application. With the applications mentioned by the OP, one very easily runs into situations where a couple more GB would be helpful. Of course, the issue of current laptop chipsets not fully supporting large amounts of memory remains. One might hope that that situation will improve with the upcoming Santa Rosa chipset, but I don't know any specifics about that. But, heck, if I can have 8GB supported in a new laptop, I might seriously look at that, too... Nonsense.

Do you have a link for this information? Your table looks like Vista has the same kind of memory support as Windows 2003 Server, but information in Microsoft's Knowledge Base seems to indicate that there is no difference in memory support between XP and Vista (meaning a max of 4GB total). P.S.: Nevermind, I think I know where you got this table from: This seems to be from an old article by Paul Thurott. If that is the case, forget it. As a general rule, Thurott is about as clueless as they come when anything even remotely technical is concerned. Thurott's table is complete nonsense. 32-bit Vista supports a maximum of 4GB of RAM, under the best possible conditions.

lol, I knew somebody would ask me for the link... *goes searching again*

***EDIT***

Found it again. This is a good site showing all of the feature sets and differences between the several versions of Vista. http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...a_editions.asp

See the edit in my post above; the table in that article is nonsense, just like just about everything this guy writes. I can't believe he has been in this business for so long, given the remarkable consistency with which he produces crap. I guess his stuff is alright as a preliminary source of information for complete newbies, but as soon as things get technical, he cannot be taken serious, ever.

I caught that. I just went back and dug through the TechNET database, the Knowledgebase, and the official MSDN blog for Vista and I cannot find any more information to substantiate Thurrott's claims. When I originally posted that table, I hadn't looked very hard to find it so it just kind of felt natural to throw it up quick and move on, lol. I found a picture of the dude on another site and he kinda looks like a fruit to me Guess we will just have to wait and see what happens after the release date. There will be experimentation abound at that point and there should be plenty of people with server boards trying it out for giggles if nothing else. PAE is supposed to allow a 32-bit OS to expand beyond 4GB conventional memory limits, however I have never seen this working in practice as of yet.

That is because there is no substance to them. This article may help sort out some of the confusion. Here are some pertinent points (partially copied from the article in the link): In general, a substantial amount of memory below the 4GB limit is reserved by current chipsets for various things, including mapping video memory. If you have a 512MB video card, your chipset will take away 512MB from the 4GB pool for mapped video memory, so you will at most be able to see 3.5GB of usable memory below the 4GB threshold. In order to use a maximum of 4GB in 32-bit versions of Vista, Windows would have to be able to remap some of the memory below the 4GB threshold to higher addresses. Windows may be able to remap memory from below 4GB to above 4GB and use it there, HOWEVER that depends on at least these three factors: 1. Can your SKU of Vista actually access memory above 4GB? a. Not if it’s 32-bit it can’t. So 64-bit Vista may help you here 2. Can your processor actually access memory above 4GB? a. If it’s recent then there’s a good chance it can, and if it’s either AMD64 or EM64T it’s almost certain to 3. Does your chipset allow pages to be remapped above 4GB? a. Actually, probably not – and that’s what’s catching out a lot of folks who install 64-bit Vista to work around point 1 then find they still cannot see above 4GB Note that this means that on many machines, even 64-bit Vista will not be able to see more than 4GB... Well, looks can be deceiving, but, yes, the guy's a fruitcake, essentially.

I agree. He seems more like the conspiracy theorist than an actual technical person. I have read his site once or twice and found the place to be inept.

The 32bit Limitation is exactly what is said. A limitation of technology. This is one reason 64bit was developed. To basically fatten the pipe like they did when computing went from 8bit to 16bit, and then to 32bit. I just wish 64bit would have caught on sooner. I have been playing with it since 1996 while at apple. How many people know that Apple/motorola developed a 128bit processor back in 1995 called the PPC620 and was faaaaaast. The world wasnt even fully 32bit back then... hee hee..