Can XP use over 4GB RAM?

April 26, 2007 3:45 PM

I'm building a new PC running WinXP. Someone tells me XP won't see or use anything over 4GB of RAM. True or false?
posted by SilverTail to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Why not ask Microsoft?
posted by majick at 3:52 PM on April 26, 2007

True. Generally, you won't get more than about 3. XP can only handle 4gb of physical address space, and PCI and video card addressing generally take anywhere from .5 to 1 gig away.

Server2K3 can handle more than 4 gigs, and is largely compatible, but you have to manually turn on video and sound hardware acceleration, and it's very expensive.

XP64, if you can get drivers, will just work, but the drivers can be a problem.
posted by Malor at 3:57 PM on April 26, 2007

As the first link demonstrates, regular 32 bit XP can use up to 64GB of memory with PAE. But now that the 64 bit version of XP is out, that is a much better route, because PAE is kind of a hack and has its own issues.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:21 PM on April 26, 2007

Oops, I misread. Normal XP doesn't support PAE.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:24 PM on April 26, 2007

I've observed others go through the XP-64bit driver nightmare, so I'm afraid to go that route.

So 4GB it is! Bummer.

Thanks all!
posted by SilverTail at 4:31 PM on April 26, 2007