Given the right computer (CPU, BIOS, Chipset) and the right OS (64-bit) you'll be able to use all 4GB. But if your system is currently reporting 2.75GB under a 32-bit OS then that's all you'll ever get until you either upgrade to 64-bit or get rid of some hardware.

Win32 allows programs to use 2GB of memory (RAM + Page file). If you have lots of programs running they'll each be allowed to use 2GB.

It's possible for a program built for Win32 to have been built to use more than 2GB if it's available, but I don't think that's very common. I think what that would mean is that if the 32bit program were running under win64 then it might actually be able to use more memory.

I'm guessing here, but I wouldn't be surprised if that /3GB switch gives you trouble since Windows can only see 2.75 GB on your system. To make more available, you could remove some cards. Very fat graphics cards are a big address consumer and I wouldn't be surprised if you told me you have one or two graphics cards with 512 MB on them. All that graphics memory uses addresses that might otherwise have been used for RAM.

In general, you can never use all 4GB of RAM if you're running a 32-bit OS, but an average system would probably have 3.2 GB available to it.

Vista32 is built with a hard limit. I think it's 3.12 GB. Vista32 won't address more than that, by design.

Rob Mack

(just for info) My Vista32 sees 3582MB. Vista64 of course sees the full amount.

" To take advantage of the 3 GB available to user-mode programs, the program must be linked with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE option." You can read more here .

I would 2nd everyone's comments, with some corrections to MH_Stevens' posting.

We should elaborate a little about why hardware is a factor. In the 32-bit world, everything has to fit into a 4GB address space. The application, the OS, and the hardware drivers. XP by default gives the application 2GB and leaves the rest for the OS and the hardware. ("Address Space" doesn't have to mean physical memory. If you have 1GB of RAM then the remainder of the 4GB address space is virtual memory / swapfile).

When you put 4GB of RAM into the machine, the part which isn't "visible" in Task Manager, etc. is the part that got reserved by the hardware drivers. For the remainder (what shows up as "Physical Memory" in Task Manager), 2GB goes to the application and the rest to the OS.

WIth a 64 bit OS there is tons of address space, thus the hardware becomes a non-issue. The OS can create a 4 GB address space for the 32-bit application without stealing from that for hardware. If a 32-bit app were compiled in the manner that ECB mentioned, it could use a lot more than 2GB. But bear in mind that a 32-bit application still won't get more than 4GB of address space.

When / if Vegas is release as a 64 bit application it will be able to use as much RAM as you can afford to install in the machine!

Also, a lot of BIOS programs actually lock out some address space even before the OS gets to it. If you install a 64 bit OS and put in 4GB of RAM, the OS may not see it all until you tell the BIOS to stop doing that. Typical BIOS configuration setting is something like "disable memory hole".

UlfLaursen,

Your figure of RAM used/available to your system seems low to me -- though you didn't specify how much RAM you actually have installed.

Maybe it depends on motherboard and other factors, but I only have the 32-bit XP Home and Sys Properties shows 3.37. out of the 4 Gb. I have installed. See my full system specs by clicking my forum username.

From researching this issue, the figures I've seen for a similar situation as mine (4 Gb) seems consistently mid 3.x Gb.
Not 2.x as yours seems to be.

Also as Jayster stated in more tech-detail, the absent amount of RAM in Properties does not go to waste so to speak: it is allocated to hardware use--such as video card, which while not used directly by Vegas or the OS is still beneficial.

This according to Crucial, the brand of the RAM I use. I called them when I discovered this 32-bit Windows "anomaly" once i had popped in the extra 2 Gb. I had just purchased recently.

I think it's worth repeating again--do yourself a favor and download the tiny utility "RamPage." It sits in the system tray and tells you how much of your memory is actually in use at the moment. The second purpose of RamPage is to "free" memory, which I think is unnecessary, given Window's efficient memory allocation process. To turn off this RamPage function, just put "0" in the "Try to free additional memory" box.

Also, the original RamPage was able to show free space only up to 1GB of ram. To work with more than that, download the optional exe file on the RamPage site.

The only time I'm really pushing my memory limits is when I use DeShaker. I've found that each instance of DeShaker can consume up to 400MB of ram for each HD clip on the second pass.

I mention all this because I'm constantly surprised how little ram is actually needed for most Vegas tasks.

Been many years since I fiddles with the innards of computers. Way back then though we struck a big snag adding more memory addresses. Devices such as disk controllers used DMA but didn't have all the address lines, end result was ALL our hardware needed to be redsigned, drivers rewritten etc.
The funny things was the software engineers didn't even mention this problem initially to the hardware designers. They just rewrote the disk drivers to DMA the data into lower memory and then copy it to wherever it was needed. That kind of halved the disk transfer speed of course.
I haven't a clue how this plays out in the PC world (we we're using 68020s on VMEBus under Versados) but I figure the DMA transfers still have to go somewhere.

Bob.

Hi

I had an issue where my windows xp home sp2 would only recognize 2GB of the 4GB installed. I was pretty surprised since I was expecting it to recognize something around 3.4GB (thats what the guys at the computer store told me to expect when I bought it). After a long and exhaustive google marathon I upgraded my asus p5b motherboards bios and now it recognizes 2.97GB.

Sami

That's interesting. MS had an article in their knowledge base saying that Vista would be capped at around 3.12. Or was it 3.21...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605

Anyway, if yours shows more...seeing is believing and knowledge base writers can definitely get things wrong.

Rob

Actually, the hardware itself is "memory mapped" and consumes addresses as soon as the BIOS recognizes it, before the OS can even load. Device drivers can go into the remaining memory once the OS loads.

Systems that can address more than 4 GB may do it in one of a couple of ways. Our machines here have a bios switch and they just remap all memory between 2 and 4 GB to start above 4 GB. If the OS can also address addresses above 4 GB then it can see and use the memory.

More modern systems appear to just automatically remap memory that is in conflict with MMIO devices, so if your system is reporting 3.2 GB available under win32 then the systems just remaps that last 800 MB to start above the 4GB address point. At least that's what I've been seeing. This is a rough explanation and I'm sure someone more factoid oriented will offer finer details.

If your OS can't see addresses above 4GB then you'd never notice that the memory is remapped up there. It's outside the city limits.

One other thing to note. Memory Mapped hardware will always use the address blocks from 4GB and downward (the board has to work with a 32bit OS, after all). So, if you were to buy a system that can support 8GB and you install all 8GB, you'll see a little less available, just like in the case of 4GB under Win32. So get the motherboard that supports 16GB.

Rob Mack

Thanks for the link - interesting reading. My system is definitely showing 3582MB, and task manager totals it to 3581MB.

Oh well. Lucky me I suppose.

Ken

You get all sorts of explanations about the "missing" RAM when running Win32. However, I assure you that the missing RAM actually is wasted. That missing RAM has no effect on your system and if it wasn't installed you wouldn't miss it.

However, you'd never get that last 0.37 GB without installing all 4GB of RAM, so there's some value to it.

Ulf's available RAM is a little low, but our Axio systems are even lower because of all the hardware installed. I'd assume from his figure that he has a pair of graphics cards with a lot of memory on them, since those can use up a lot of address space.

Rob Mack

I have to laugh, because I write those sorts of KB articles. We get things wrong, and often have no idea what we're talking about. And then someone goes and changes a design later on...However, I worked long and hard with one of our client's engineers and am reasonably confident of what I'm saying.

Lucky you!

Interesting. very similar to the way our systems act, but there's a BIOS switch that does this. The switch is there to allow memory above 4GB to be recognized on these dual Opteron systems but it just maps all the RAM starting at 2GB and up to new addresses at 4GB and up. On a 32-bit system the memory just disappears. You new BIOS is much more sensible about it.

Rob

Law of diminishing returns IMO.

"Upgrade" to a more resource hungry OS so that it can recognize more ram?

John

My Intel Quad core supports Physical Address Extension (PAE) which expands the bits that can be used for memeory addressing from 32 to 36 bits and it is supported by XP Pro. YOu can read about it here.

Hey, Ulf, are you reading all this valuable input here? :)

"I mention all this because I'm constantly surprised how little ram is actually needed for most Vegas tasks."

Ditto. To me that sums it all up. And it's also one reason I'm going to avoid getting Vista for as long as I can. As one contributor stated, why waste resources, CPU, RAM or otherwise on an a bells-and-whistles overloaded (and IMO over-hyped OS).
.

PAE is quite complicated and it looks like applications need to be explicitly written to make use of it. I'm not aware of any that actually do.

Back when I was using Vegas 5 I remember doing an HDV project with output format to wmv. It had lots of stills in it, PIPs, effects tracks, etc. It pegged the 2GB limit and crashed on every render. I did two things which alleviated the problem. I upgraded to Vegas 6 and I started using 64-bit XP. This got the project to render successfully.

What XP x64 did for 32-bit Vegas was give back the address space that was previously "stolen" by the hardware and the OS. I also believe that Vegas 6 was probably more efficient in its memory use. I also managed to render DSE's HDV rendertest (from December 2005) where most others couldn't due to crashes and "out of memory" errors. And I got it rendered faster than others except for a few with two-proc dual-core (4 total) Opteron servers. This was in early 2006, before the quad core storm.

"Hey, Ulf, are you reading all this valuable input here? :)"

I sure am, but it's 6 o'clock AM now over here in Denmark and I just woke up, just to see 19 post - wow.

Thanks for all input, guys - have to read it more carefully during the day (when my boss is not watching, he he)


"Ditto. To me that sums it all up. And it's also one reason I'm going to avoid getting Vista for as long as I can. As one contributor stated, why waste resources, CPU, RAM or otherwise on an a bells-and-whistles overloaded (and IMO over-hyped OS)."

I think I can wote for that too, Soniclight



/Ulf

Ulf,

I should have known you were in an other time zone... after all, I was born and raised in Europe and should recognize Scandinavian names. It did occur to me in passing, but it didn't regiater enough :)

I went to your part of the continent a few times in my mid teens -- from your Tivoli Gardens, to Norsk -and Svensk-land (Stockholm, Gotland, Bergen and all the way up to Kirkenes and the then Soviet border on that half-cargo/half-passenger route thing called Hute-something :)

Got the mumps in sailing camp in Bergen or Stockholm--can't remember, but came in second in a race -- after rescuing someone who had capsized. Must not have been a very hard race :)

My father was an international journalist, so I got to tag along for some interesting trips.

Anyway, I'm definitely going off topic here. Glad the Vegas forum posse could be of help to you on this issue..

~ Soniclight
(a.k.a. Philip--now in Los Angeles, California, America-land)

Well, basically, if ulf wants the full 4 GB then he needs to find a 64-bit XP or use the 64-bit vista. Vegas, being a 32-bit app, probably wont try to use more than 2GB even under a 64-bit OS, but that leaves lots of room for the OS itself and probably a little less thrashing of disks because of the page file. And that's the whole point of adding more memory.

To free up a little more address space in win32 i'm guessing that switching to a lighter graphics card with less memory would help, if that's what's consuming the address space.

Is installing 4GB a total waste? Well, I guess you get matching DIMMs...and more than 2GB of RAM, but it's not quite the bang for the buck that the first 2GB were. And you're ready for a 64-bit OS if you decide to go that way. Given the speed that hardware goes out of date, it's better to build for the bird in the hand instead of the two in the bush.

Rob

We run XPx64 on a 2x Dual Core Opteron 275 box with Vegas 7.0
When we tried to run it with 4GB RAM with a Blackmagic Decklink it bluescreened. We were told to take out the extra 2GB RAM to make it work - which we did and it worked (advice from BMD).
I'm waiting on the new decklink drivers to try V8Pro, and then hopefully put the extra RAM back in. I'm also hoping I don't have to go to Vista to get full use of the RAM.
Currently we are stuck on V7 because everything we do we need SDI monitoring and output to Digibeta.
I wish the world was a lot simpler!! I just want to edit.