Friday, December 22nd 2017
NVIDIA to End Support for 32-bit Operating Systems After R390 Drivers
NVIDIA announced that it is ending driver support for 32-bit operating systems after its R390-series drivers. Following its GeForce 390.xx release, NVIDIA will not support 32-bit versions of Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Linux, or FreeBSD for any of its GPU architectures. NVIDIA will, however, offer support for critical driver security fixes for 32-bit operating systems until January 2019. This means the company will release hotfixes addressing specific critical security vulnerabilities in the drivers, as and when they're found, but such hotfixes won't include new features or optimizations that are part of the main driver trunk for 64-bit operating systems.
Source:
NVIDIA
60 Comments on NVIDIA to End Support for 32-bit Operating Systems After R390 Drivers
Programs simply do not have access to anything beyond the 3GB mark, regardless of if PAE is enabled. PAE alone does not allow 32-bit versions of Windows desktop OSes to use more than 4GB total RAM. Period. I think were done here.
Just like Windows 64-bit should be able to access and use massive amounts of RAM, but Windows 10 Home can only use a maximum of 128GB and the Win10 Pro is 2TB. Windows 8 was limited to 512GB. Heck Windows 7 Home was limited to only 16GB while the Pro version was 192GB.
Enabling PAE does not override the memory size limit Microsoft has imposed, that is the issue. And on any 32-bit Windows desktop OS, Microsoft has imposed a 4GB memory limit(or less). There is no easy way to get around it, and PAE alone doesn't do it.
Using the license as a tool to limit memory and try to force people to upgrade to more expensive versions is stupid. But they are still doing it with Windows 10. But at least the Windows 10 limit is 128GB, while Windows 10 Pro is 24TB.
BTW, Was well aware Server 2003 Enterprise was the only 32 bit "XP" gen OS that could do up to 64GB of ram. Started that debate as a joke, and it seemed like you were joking along too, but it seems it was either to subtle, or perhaps another unforeseen situation progressed it forward. It did turn into something interesting though.