Im planning on building a new machine with 3GB of ram, i chose to use XP pro because i hate vista. I understand xp is a 32bit operating system. The tech who gave me a quote said that the ram limit on xp is 2gb... i did a bit of reading around and from what i could understand 4gb is the limit... can anyone confirm this for me ? thanks !!

Hi jaycee404, I believe the cap is 4GB. Although only half of this can be used for applications and half will be used for the kernel. Hope this helps !

I Think, that some 32bit pc's will only see 3GB, even though there is 4gb. Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me can explain. Before posting try google. Backup. Use anti virus software.

4GB RAM is the maximum amount of system memory a 32bit operating system can handle, although windows systems will only show 3-3.6 GB. why? read this popular article. http://blogs.technet.com/seanearp/a...

Looks like the misunderstanding of this limitation is widespread. Response #3 is the correct one. Keep in mind that integrated graphics will always use a portion of the RAM. Even if you only install 3GB of RAM and are running integrated graphics the AVAILABLE RAM will be less by whatever amount of RAM the integrated uses or is set in the BIOS. Windows itself uses about half a GB or less for overhead.

Windows Vista 32 bit also has the same limitations. Though it may report 4 GB RAM under system, if you go to task manager you will probably see 3-3.6 GB, as reported in response 3(assuming you are not running integrated graphics). You might want to read this-I haven't tried that myself yet.

There is a 64-bit version of XP, but its driver support is poor compared to Vista 64-bit.