computer comparison

Question

Hello We have a question for you people who understand computers It regards our computer: a Dell precision 690, with two dual core 3.2 GHz processors and 2 GB RAM We love this computer it suppose to be one of the most powerful in the office It is used for running some numerical itterative problems that may well occupy most of its memory while running We think that we can get more out of it if we put more memory in it However we have been told that even if we put additional memory to it, it will not be able to allocate all because of its 32 bit nature'??' Anyway we know some other people running similar stuff on a 64 bit Dell Precision 490 with 2 dual core 2.8 GHz CPU and 8 GB RAM are getting faster results. I dont really know but I suspect our computer is more powerful on every aspect, except for the size of the RAM memory The main differences between both computers is: the operative system windows/linux, the 32/64 bit and the size of the RAM memories Now here the questions: Is there a way of changing our computer from 32 to 64 bit? How much RAM memory can we add to our 32 bit machine? Do the operative system make such a big difference in terms speed? (I guess this one is pretty much program dependent, but would like to know your opinion) Sorry for asking such basic questions Many thanks C

Dev Mgr · Answer

In a nutshell;

XP or Vista 32-bit can only address up to 4GB of memory. It ends up losing some of that to the system resources (videocard, bios, and some other features). Common is to see only about 3.25GB if you have 4GB.

In a Windows environment, any given 32-bit application by default can only use 2GB of memory. If the application was written for it, you can use the /3GB in the boot.ini to allow applications to use up to 3GB of memory. If the application wasn't written for it, and it tries to use more than 2GB of memory, it could cause stability issues.

When you go 64-bit, Windows XP and Vista can go up to 128GB depending on the version (see XP x64 here and Vista x64 here).

tr4 · Answer

Since you have the windows version of the program, you need to decide if its worth switching to the linux version. If you stay with Windows, does your application support 64 bit? Is there a cheap upgrade path if not? You may want to consider removing any other applications that may be running that you don't need to free up memory. Faster access hard drives may make a big difference. Asking your questions to the software manufacturer may be your best bet. They can tell you what runs best.

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