How much RAM can a 32bit game utilize?

L31mr0d

Ok well i've been running Vista 64bit for over a week without any major issues.

But every game i've installed thus far has been 32bit. I've scoured the web for each game looking for a 64bit patch, but no developer seems bothered making it. So i'm wondering, I have 4GB of RAM? How much of that can any 32bit game utilize? I mean do games see RAM the same way Vista does? i.e. 32bit vista will only see a max of 4GB of RAM, including your gfx ram.

Or do the games utilize the RAM based on the OS?

Skittle

I think the max memory addressable by a 32-bit application is 2Gb. There's a modifier that you can do to an exe to make it address 3Gb but some games that use Punkbuster etc. won't like you modifying the exe..

8T8

Under 64-bit OS max ram 32-bit app can use is 4GB no more than that.

Under 32-bit OS max is well the easy answer is 2GB but it gets complicated so it can vary up to 3GB as Skittle mentions.

As for 64-bit games they are pretty rare not really needed (yet), there is a 64-bit version of FarCry and Half Life 2 if you download it from steam.

Khannie

With 64bit vista, your answer is (in theory) 4GB. Reality is that you only have 4G installed, so it'll be less.

8T8 wrote:

Under 32-bit OS max is well the easy answer is 2GB but it gets complicated so it can vary up to 3GB as Skittle mentions.

32bit Linux is slightly crippled like this too, though not as badly as windows. As with all things linux, the level of cripple is configurable (the rest of the ram is reserved by the kernel, so if you need a lot of ram for a userspace application, you can easily* alter how much the kernel takes for itself).

*for a geek

L31mr0d

does that 4GB include the RAM being utilized on the graphics card?

mathias

does that 4GB include the RAM being utilized on the graphics card?

No , thats exclusively used to render graphics , and is not usable as system memory , ( some graphics cards can use system memory , but the system can not use graphics memory for anything other than graphics)

I have heard rumours of apps being allowed to use Idle gpu cycles and memory , but they are still very much in development as far as I know.

Stephen

Windows Vista 32-bit had problems with people with lots of ram and fancy graphics cards with about 1GB of memory - it was trying to address all of that within the 3.75-or-so-GB limit. I believe they recently issued a hotfix to work around it.