birdieIm not sure I like being argumentative, but I surely like sound arguments which you're severely lacking.

No, just no. He's got an argument quite compelling and you just seem to want to be "that guy" at this point.

PAE still has a 4GB per process limit in its best use case.

R-T-BNo, just no. He's got an argument quite compelling and you just seem to want to be "that guy" at this point.

PAE still has a 4GB per process limit in its best use case.

Never was used to best extent unfortunately.

eidairaman1Never was used to best extent unfortunately.

Good suggestion. :) I'll ignore his last comment.

PcForgewhere is the poll

Poll for what?

birdieWhere does the NVIDIA's article mention GeForce GPUs? From the article:

I'm not sure I like being argumentative, but I surely like sound arguments which you're severely lacking.

Why is there any argument to be had? It matters not whether 32 bit can be faster. Fact: Nvidia is pulling support.

Play nice or move on. Keep on topic folks.

birdieThere's this thing called PAE but people love to say stupid things.

Except PAE doesn't increase the RAM limit beyond 4GB on Windows Desktop OSes.

birdieYep, you keep doing that by hinting at the fact that GPUs are mostly used for gaming. It surely looks like you like embarrassing yourself.

Also "can create" is a very weak argument against deprecating things which work perfectly for a large swath of people and use cases.

These compatibility issues are exactly why Microsoft still limits their 32-bit Desktop OSes to 4GB. So really PAE is a moot point in this discussion.

This a little sad, nostalgically. It's a little bit more of an end of an era.

qubitI'm sure someone will complain, lol. But seriously, anyone rocking a 32-bit OS with 2GB RAM nowadays seriously needs an upgrade anyway.

To be fair, when PAE is enabled, a 32bit Windows OS can actually address and use ram above the 4GB "limit". Been doing it for years. It's not really a problem if you know what you're doing.

lexluthermiesterTo be fair, when PAE is enabled, a 32bit Windows OS can actually address and use ram above the 4GB "limit". Been doing it for years. It's not really a problem if you know what you're doing.

Not any of the desktop OSes.

newtekie1Not any of the desktop OSes.

Xp Pro? Yeah totally. Been using it for years. Are you talking about Home and Home Premium versions when you said "Desktop" OS's? All of the "Pro" type versions of Windows can do it.
Edit; Here is more info on subject. msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366796(v=vs.85).aspx

BadFrog128 bit is a long ways away. 64 bit systems can go up to a theoretical limit of 16 Exa Bytes but usually limited to CPU and OS selected

You're confusing memory controllers with register width. For example a "64-bit CPUs" have nothing to do with memory capacity. Let's take an i5-4690K (Haswell) as an example, it has a memory controller of 39 bits physical, and 48 bits virtual address space.

Even the old 16-bit Intel 8086 could address 1 MB through a 20-bit memory controller. This did of course involve setting an upper and lower memory address, but it was able to use more than the 64 kB you would expect.
The Intel 80286 extended the memory controller to 24-bit, allowing up to 16 MB of address space. It also introduced "protected mode", with virtual address spaces for processes, allowing proper multitasking.
In the mid 90s Intel launched PAE to support over 4 GB address space on 32-bit CPUs.

Other famous examples includes the MOS Technology 6502, a 8-bit CPU used in computers/consoles such as Commodore64(64kB RAM), Atari 2600 and the NES(2kB RAM).

So whenever people are referring to "xx-bit CPUs" or "xx-bit consoles", they are talking about register width of the CPU. This becomes quite confusing when talking about 8-bit graphics, which is completely unrelated.

CrAsHnBuRnXpGood! Death to 32bit!

Get main stream support for 64bit then lets start transitioning to 128bit!

We've had basic 128-bit support since Pentium III, and the most recent Skylake-X have 512-bit support through AVX. A CPU with full 128-bit support throughout the instruction set will happen if there is a need for it, but don't expect it anytime soon.

lexluthermiesterXp Pro? Yeah totally. Been using it for years. Are you talking about Home and Home Premium versions when you said "Desktop" OS's? All of the "Pro" type versions of Windows can do it.
Edit; Here is more info on subject. msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366796(v=vs.85).aspx

XP Pro only enabled more than 4GB pre-SP2, when SP2 was implemented the RAM limit was reduced to 4GB. Every 32-bit Windows desktop operating system since, including the Pro versions, has limited the amount of RAM to 4GB regardless of if PAE is enabled or not.

You can see this on Microsoft's Memory LImits page: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_10

PAE alone will not bypass the memory limit's Microsoft has put in place.

Jebus, according to the poll almost 10% of TPU readers still use a 32-bit OS. That's horrifying.

Git yo asses into the 21st century plzkthx.

efikkanYou're confusing memory controllers with register width. For example a "64-bit CPUs" have nothing to do with memory capacity. Let's take an i5-4690K (Haswell) as an example, it has a memory controller of 39 bits physical, and 48 bits virtual address space.

Even the old 16-bit Intel 8086 could address 1 MB through a 20-bit memory controller. This did of course involve setting an upper and lower memory address, but it was able to use more than the 64 kB you would expect.
The Intel 80286 extended the memory controller to 24-bit, allowing up to 16 MB of address space. It also introduced "protected mode", with virtual address spaces for processes, allowing proper multitasking.
In the mid 90s Intel launched PAE to support over 4 GB address space on 32-bit CPUs.

Other famous examples includes the MOS Technology 6502, a 8-bit CPU used in computers/consoles such as Commodore64(64kB RAM), Atari 2600 and the NES(2kB RAM).

So whenever people are referring to "xx-bit CPUs" or "xx-bit consoles", they are talking about register width of the CPU. This becomes quite confusing when talking about 8-bit graphics, which is completely unrelated.


We've had basic 128-bit support since Pentium III, and the most recent Skylake-X have 512-bit support through AVX. A CPU with full 128-bit support throughout the instruction set will happen if there is a need for it, but don't expect it anytime soon.

It's been a long time ago when I owned a 8088 XT but iirc the memory pointer was only 16 bit so it could only access 65536 bytes directly but it could access more than that because some register was used to swap in different banks of memory to be used. It couldn't use two 64KB banks at the same time though so programmers had to allow for that.

I believe when Commodore came out with the C128 which had 128 KB of RAM that it did the same thing.

AssimilatorJebus, according to the poll almost 10% of TPU readers still use a 32-bit OS. That's horrifying.

Git yo asses into the 21st century plzkthx.

I voted yes, because I'm forced to still use 32-bit Windows to run a legacy program. But it is only on one computer dedicated to that one program. So not having the latest graphics drivers doesn't really matter to me.

newtekie1I voted yes, because I'm forced to still use 32-bit Windows to run a legacy program. But it is only on one computer dedicated to that one program. So not having the latest graphics drivers doesn't really matter to me.

Have you tried a virtual machine for it?

newtekie1I voted yes, because I'm forced to still use 32-bit Windows to run a legacy program. But it is only on one computer dedicated to that one program. So not having the latest graphics drivers doesn't really matter to me.

If it's one of those programs that will only work with 32 bit XP then there is XP Mode available that runs within Windows 7 but I don't think MS carried over support for this mode in Win 10.


www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8002

newtekie1XP Pro only enabled more than 4GB pre-SP2, when SP2 was implemented the RAM limit was reduced to 4GB. Every 32-bit Windows desktop operating system since, including the Pro versions, has limited the amount of RAM to 4GB regardless of if PAE is enabled or not. You can see this on Microsoft's Memory LImits page: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_10 PAE alone will not bypass the memory limit's Microsoft has put in place.

This could become a reeeaaaly complicated discussion. Just going to say this. I've got WinXP Pro running on a system with 6GB of ram. Windows >itself< never goes above 4GB, but then again, it never needs to. However, programs and games often do as the address space is available and usable. I have personally tested this. It does work.

64KIf it's one of those programs that will only work with 32 bit XP then there is XP Mode available that runs within Windows 7 but I don't think MS carried over support for this mode in Win 10.

They did, you can select XP mode in the compatibility tab.

lexluthermiesterThey did, you can select XP mode in the compatibility tab.

Yes, I know there is XP compatability mode with Win 10 but XP Mode is actually the real XP OS running inside of Windows 7 if I'm understanding it right.

64KYes, I know there is XP compatibility mode with Win 10 but XP Mode is actually the real XP OS running inside of Windows 7 if I'm understanding it right.

Oh, you mean the Virtual Machine thing. In that case I think you're right, Win 10 doesn't have that, AFAIK. I've never used it in 7. Always found it easier to simply dual boot.

64KIf it's one of those programs that will only work with 32 bit XP then there is XP Mode available that runs within Windows 7 but I don't think MS carried over support for this mode in Win 10.


www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8002

Actually, it will work in any version of Windows as long as it is 32-bit. It is currently running on a Windows 10 Pro 32-bit machine.

lexluthermiesterThis could become a reeeaaaly complicated discussion. Just going to say this. I've got WinXP Pro running on a system with 6GB of ram. Windows >itself< never goes above 4GB, but then again, it never needs to. However, programs and games often do as the address space is available and usable. I have personally tested this. It does work.

If the OS isn't addressing the memory, most programs running under the OS won't use it. There are a few rare exceptions with programs designed specifically to use the non-accessable memory the OS isn't addressing(Primocache comes to mind). But simply enabling PAE and running a bunch of normal programs will result in a limit of 4GB, and running more programs isn't going to get your past that 4GB limit.

That's not to say you can't run programs and the total amount of memory used is larger than 4GB. You can have 100 programs running, and they can say they are using 8GB of RAM, but only 4GB of that will be system memory. That is the beauty of paging.

newtekie1If the OS isn't addressing the memory, most programs running under the OS won't use it. There are a few rare exceptions with programs designed specifically to use the non-accessable memory the OS isn't addressing(Primocache comes to mind). But simply enabling PAE and running a bunch of normal programs will result in a limit of 4GB, and running more programs isn't going to get your past that 4GB limit.

That's not to say you can't run programs and the total amount of memory used is larger than 4GB. You can have 100 programs running, and they can say they are using 8GB of RAM, but only 4GB of that will be system memory. That is the beauty of paging.

Ok. Install Windows Xp on compatible hardware with more than 4GB of ram, disable the swapfile, enable PAE and properly config it, then try filling up ram. And as this is a debate way off topic, we're calling it done.

I don't use drivers after 307.74 for my Windows XP gaming rig, anyway. Those support up to GTX 600 series cards. Drivers after 307.74 start getting Geforce Experience bloatware.

PaganstompI don't use drivers after 307.74 for my Windows XP gaming rig, anyway. Those support up to GTX 600 series cards. Drivers after 307.74 start getting Geforce Experience bloatware.

Thanks for that info. Thinking it's time for a downgrade to those drivers. Just customized the install and left them out, but would prefer they not be there at all.

Good.