I am getting a 64bit laptop. I am considering dual booting (or triple) 32bit XP and 64bit window7. Will 4gb ram cause problems on XP? or would it just ignore the last GB? Which should i get and why? BTW this isnt a game laptop. Its only about $600

You shouldn't see any problems, you just won't be able to use all 4 GB from XP. (There's some switch you can activate that tries to use the full 4GB, but I don't know what it is offhand or how well it works.)

I'd personally go for the 4GB because you may as well get all the bang for the buck you can over on the 64-bit side of things.

Quote: Original post by ApochPiQ
(There's some switch you can activate that tries to use the full 4GB, but I don't know what it is offhand or how well it works.)

/PAE, but it doesn't work.

Out of curiosity, why dual boot with XP?

XP r0x0rz my b0x0rz
Why wouldnt i want to boot with XP?
I am thinking about triple booting, Windows7 64bit, XP32bit, Linux
Out of curiosity why wouldnt i want to have a XP installation ?
PS: By default the machine comes with vista. I may keep vista around in case of problems but chances are i'll remove it after XP and windows7 run without fail.
PPS: The extra 1gb of ram is $50. I consider that as a fair price. The 3gb comes with vista32bit and 4gb comes with vista 64bit

Quote: Original post by mutex
Out of curiosity, why dual boot with XP?

I suppose the fact that some games run better on it helps!

Quote: Original post by AcidZombie24
I am getting a 64bit laptop. I am considering dual booting (or triple) 32bit XP and 64bit window7. Will 4gb ram cause problems on XP? or would it just ignore the last GB? Which should i get and why?

BTW this isnt a game laptop. Its only about $600

The most a 32-bit OS can support is 4Gb of addressable memory. You should be okay with 4gb on 32bit XP. Though, if I were in your shoes, I'd go for a 64 bit operating system since your chip is also 64 bits. It'll take fewer clock cycles to run instructions. Also, the kernel of Windows7 is obviously going to be more advanced than WinXP and will probably use your hardware better.

...With 4Gb of ram, I bet you won't even need a page file.

Quote: Original post by Programmer One
/PAE, but it doesn't work.

That's because this is not the right switch. It's /3GB as a parameter to the Windows kernel when it boots. Then all applications that have the large address aware flag set will get 3GB of virtual address space. Most larger applications, such as 3DSMax or Photoshop, have this flag set, and will make use of the increased memory. Link your own applications with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES to gt it too. And yes, it works as expected. But it does have some other consequences, as it reduces the amount of kernel address space.

More info here.

But that's to extend the application address space, not the OS address space. Each application linked with LARGEADDRESSAWARE will have 3GB address space, but the OS is still limited to 4GB.

PAE was some hardware extension Intel added to their CPUs - but it never worked properly as far as I can recall. If I had to hazard a guess, it'd be because of driver/app compatibility, which is the same reason why you need both a /3GB boot-time switch as well as link with LARGEADDRESSAWARE to turn on extended address space.

Quote: Original post by Sc4Freak
But that's to extend the application address space, not the OS address space. Each application linked with LARGEADDRESSAWARE will have 3GB address space, but the OS is still limited to 4GB.

PAE is not supported for addresses over 4GB on Windows XP.

Quote: Original post by Sc4Freak
PAE was some hardware extension Intel added to their CPUs - but it never worked properly as far as I can recall.

PAE works, but you need Windows Server 2003 or 2008 in order to use it (might also work on Vista 32, but I'm not sure).