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11616
4GB Laptops and no 64bit support?
Hi,
I want to buy a Vostro 1510 Laptop with 4GB RAM, Dell is offering. This system needs a 64bit system (e.g. Vista) to address all the 4GB. But I couldn't find any driver support for a 64bit system on the support website for the Vostro laptops.
So my question is: Does Dell sell Laptops with 4GB RAM even if there only about 3GB can be used by the user?
Or is the 4GB Laptop shipped with a 64bit Vista including all 64bit drivers?
Thanks
Konrad
Mr._Pseudonym
315 Posts
1
January 10th, 2009 12:00
:^/ Well, a 32 bit processor can reach 4,294,967,296 addresses, or 4GB of RAM. But, the processor must also communicate with other things, such as the graphics card, sound card, input/output controllers for the keyboard, mouse/touchpad, optical drive, hard drive, USB and othe ports, and so on. Since the range of addresses used by these must exist withing the 4,294,967,296 address space, the whole range cannot be used for RAM.
How much you'll have left is partly due to how much is used by everything else. The bigger your graphics card, the less RAM is left, etc.
The only way around that is to use a 64-bit operating system, which requires a 64-bit processor.
:^/ As for 64-bit drivers for Vista, I expect that it includes appropriate drivers for most popular components, but if your Vostro 1510 has a 32-bit processor as my XPS M1210 does, then you won't be able to use a 64-bit OS, and will be maxed out at 4GB's of RAM, just as I am now.
konradM
2 Posts
0
January 10th, 2009 04:00
Is this so hard to anwser? I'm wondering, why no one replies that easy question in the last days ...
dgfrandin
19 Posts
0
May 7th, 2009 21:00
The Pentium4/Core2Duo/Core2Quad processors used in all Dell machines since about the GX270/280 support EM64T extensions which means: They WILL run 64bit XP/Vista/Win7/Ubuntu JUST fine.. But Dell, in their infinite "wisdom" has apparently decided to force us to continue to use outdated 32bit OS, at least if we want all the Dell-specific devices that these systems have... I just ran into this when trying to install the Win7 RC on a spare drive.. Since I have 4GB of ram, I figured the 64bit version would be fine... WRONG!! Nothing for 64bit Vista, which in the case of 32bit Vista drivers, should work fine with Win7... Extremely annoying.....
Dave576
170 Posts
0
May 7th, 2009 22:00
Mr. Pseudonym,
I have seen other brief explanations for the 4GB RAM utilization issue on 32bit OS, but this one explains it better!
Thanks Mr.Pseudonym.