kona: to play video games that require more memory?  To multitask the system with more, heavier processes?

Phantasma: You can end your sentences with periods instead of ellipses.  Just sayin. I've not heard anything about there being different drivers for Ultimate versus other versions of Windows 7.  And I've tried to keep up with the news on it.  Do you have a source?

(and duh they would want you to spend the money to upgrade to Ultimate.  They are, after all, a business.)

Didn't think anyone would want to give me karma. Thanks.

The OS doesn't need more than 4GB memory, even Vista does not. Applications and games require memory, and the more you have, the better your computer will behave. Why? Because you can have a whole lot more of the system cached in memory. Disk cache in memory is heck of a lot faster than direct access. With drives hitting terabytes it makes sense to have gigabytes of them cached in memory over time.

And you start to sound alot like good ol' Bill:

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

starkers, for your info here in good old AUSTRALIA just today I had helped a customer obtain a LEGIT vista home premium 64bit oem at a computer fair for his NEW I7 box, BLOODY HELL its FAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the i7 not the v********ta

it beats my oced q6600 on movie recoding by 2 to 1 ie it takes 6 min 35 seconds, mine takes 13 min with win7 64bit 8gb ddr2 800 ram, and the i7 920 with 6gb ddr3 1600 and the completed tower cost aprox $2200 au

harpo

Mine came in at just on 3 ....but it's all about the other bits....as well...not just the cpu and ram ....

I'm not saying we can't get x64 OSes at alll.... I am saying, however, that the larger retailers do not carry them, and most won't order them in on a one-off basis.... thus making x64 OSes as rare as rocking horse shit in all but some of the smaller PC stores... and even then they don't always stock them, you have place them on order

By the way after some research I learned that the current Linux Kernel build - 32 bit - can support and use up to 64 GB of RAM.

This is only true for certain processors, and has nothing to do with what OS you're using.  For most processors, the max memory for 32 bit is ~4 GB (that includes the memory in a GPU).  And there is a 64 bit Linux build.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

edit: I was mistaken - the only Windows OS with PAE are a couple of their server OSs.  For home use, Windows 32 bit can't go above 4 GB of RAM.  However, the fact remains that the processor has to have PAE capability for the OS to use.  I am not sure how common it is for a processor to have this.

Windows 32 bit can't go above 4 GB but Linux can. Ha.

It doesn't have anything to do with the CPU. It has to do with the mobo. If you can install 8 GB of RAM and that old Pentium 4 chip can see it and use it then so be it. The only thing that limits RAM usage is the OS.

Nobody cares about Linux.  I mean nobody. 

On this site you are right.

Except the folks that use it.

ID....you're gonna make all the propeller-hat wearers cry, now.

Nobody loves me - everybody hates me - think I'll go and eat worms.....

If you actually read any of the link, for the chip to "see" it, it has to be able to calculate higher than the 32 bits allow, using the PAE architecture.  This issue has nothing to do with how many slots your motherboard has.

Like I said, I'm not sure how many chips have PAE architecture built into them.  From what basic research I did, it seemed like it's generally something on server chips, but not on home computers, since every time the term came up in a search it was in relation to a server.  It just so happens that Linux (which is popular for servers) has the same kernel for both servers and home use.

And honestly, if you have the chip to support it, there is no reason to not go to 64 bit OS.  If your processor isn't good enough to run 64 bit, then upgrading RAM past 3 GB probably shouldn't be your priority.

My CPU is 32 bit. Max memory I can use on this setup is 1 GB.