4GB of RAM on Windows 7 32-bit

Question

Possible Duplicates:
Windows XP and RAM 3.5GB+
Is there way to enable 4 GB RAM in 32-bit Windows OS?

I installed 4GB of RAM on my Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (it used to have only 2GB).

But it says only 3GB usable, and I still often get a "Not enough memory" problem on Photoshop.

Is there any way to make it utilise the full 4GB?

Solution 1

See if PAE can help you:

How can I enable PAE on Windows 7 (32-bit) to support more than 3.5 GB of RAM?

Solution 2

You have a 64 bits CPU, why did you bough a 32 bit operating system ?

You need Windows 7 64 bits and you can use much more memory and it will run faster.

Solution 3

Quite simply, you can't use it, 32bit cannot access above 3gig due to limitations of the 32bit addressing, only 64bit OS with a 64bit CPU can access above this.

Comments

[Carlos Garcia]

That's Not full true. Many Windows Server Version of 32 bits (Enterprise and datacert) can use PAE and other SO tools to address much more memory. BUT in "simple" SO for desktop, Your answer is 100% true.

[吴环宇]

Ubuntu also addresses all four gigabytes using PAE.

[吴环宇]

Only in very specific scenarios will any performance increase be noticeable. Video encoding is one example. In most cases the difference is negligible.

[Dragos]

Of course it depends on the application but still faster.

[Aximili]

Because there might still be software that I need that is not compatible with 64-bit yet...

[Aximili]

This actually says the limit on x86 is 4GB msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx And a friend of mine can see 3.25GB out of his 4GB on his Windows 7 32-bit

[Aximili]

This tool does it: unawave.de/windows-7-tipps/virusnote.html (Thanks to k00x and Breakthrough)

[Jamie Hanrahan]

"Install 64 bit Windows" is the right answer but the 3 GB virtual address space limit has nothing to do with it. This is a limit on physical addresses, not virtual.

[Jamie Hanrahan]

It's called the "3 GB barrier" but where it actually is depends on what PCI hardware you have using up physical address space. Put in a much smaller video card, you'll find you have more RAM usable. Larger video cards, or more of them, you'll get less RAM. I have one machine, a dual-socket Xeon monster with a video card on each node. Just to see what would happen I installed Win7 x86 on it before installing my real OS. It saw only 2 GB!

[Jamie Hanrahan]

You can run that in a 32-bit VM.