re: 4 gigs is not 4 gigs

Chris Knight — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 05:44:10 GMT

Other good references for understanding what PAE is, how to use it, and what its shortcomings are:

en.wikipedia.org/.../Physical_Address_Extension

www.microsoft.com/.../PAEdrv.mspx

www.microsoft.com/.../pae_os.mspx

support.microsoft.com/.../283037

PAE was a short term hack cobbled together by Intel while they worked on the important 64-bit proper solution known as the Itanium (or its derogatory term - Itanic). Thankfully, AMD came to the rescue with x64 extensions, which Intel finally thought was a really good idea and hence copied.

re: 4 gigs is not 4 gigs

Graeme Smith — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 11:37:02 GMT

BUT

As Susan is ever one to tell you - TEST TEST TEST if you try the /PAE switch.

<quote>Some drivers might fail to load if PAE is enabled, because the device

might be unable to perform 64-bit addressing or the drivers might assume

that PAE mode requires more than 4 GB of RAM</quote>

AND that ALSO means not every 32 bit program is designed to deal with memory addressing in the higher reaches and you can get some wildly unpredictable results if you try it.

As much of our own testing has confirmed - the /PAE switch is not a magic bullet. 64 bit computing with 64 bit versions of your program is a better way to go if it is an option.