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is there a preformance hit in win32 for ram hotfix

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punyloony:
I was just wondering does anyone know whether there is a performance hit for ram over 2 gigs on a 32 bit system that has the hotfix to allow more ram.  I had to install it when I got hell gate London. I am not asking for tech support but rather information.

Edit: damn my disgraphia got me again in the title of the thread. I actually didnt need that hot part before the hotfix.

datora:
.
When you are the OP and you edit the first post that starts a topic, you can also edit the title.

Aside from that, WinXP SP3 32-bit can handle ~3.5 GB RAM ... at least, the PC3200 spec for 184-pin SDRAM DDR 400 for older desktops.  So, put in 4 GB and it will use as much as it can and ignore the rest.  No performance hit that I'm aware of.  The hotfix should only be necessary if you want to utilize over that ~3.5 GB.  If your system is configured reasonably well, that extra half gig probably won't make a difference, unless you're trying to configure with 6 or 8 GB.

As far as I know, a system such as I just described should not take a performance hit from the hotfix.  Other variations on that I can't speak to.  I'm running two systems like that right now that are configured with a 2 GB kit + 512 MB kit for total = 2560 MB  physical PC3200 SDRAM RAM running at 200.0 MHz & 2.5 volts.  If I happened to have a 1 GB kit, I would switch it for the 512 MB kit and get the totals up to 3 GB ... which is effectively all these old system could really use use.

What I did pay attention to, and don't know if you did, is the timings.  I got those matched perfectly, and had to go to some trouble to make that happen.  For 200 MHz, the motherboards I have only do auto-detect; I can't get in and manually force timings or overclock.  So, I had to swap kits around until one system matches both kits at 3-3-3-8-0 and the other system matches at 3-4-4-8-0.

At one point, the bank 1 memory of one system was 3-4-4-8-0 and the bank 2 on that system was 3-3-3-8-0 .. which resulted in "flaky" behavior (to get technical about it).  Random freezes and blue screens until I swapped & matched until timings were perfect match.


tl;dr version: No.  I don't think the hotfix is causing you issues, although your system specs might be different than my experience.  Make sure each bank is very closely matched DDR with a pair of chips that either actually are a kit or "effectively" are.  And, both banks should be as close as you can match them, identical timings are a Good Start.

If both banks together have 4 chips that form a single 4x kit, all the better.  Mismatched chips are usually a more likely cause of performance hit.

punyloony:
I was just thinking that the reason on vista that it initially only detects less than a full 2 gigs is that the addressing for 32 bit OP SYS is insufficient to address all of the ram and that there is some long way of rendering the data that would reduce the performance. I am not too worried because when I upgraded to new ram I was looking more for higher performance than more space and was swapping out low end DDR2 for nicer DDR3. I noticed that  Vista detected 3.6 gigs because of the hotfix I had put on it. If I remember correctly the reson for the hotfix was instability due to games thinking there was 2gigs but 32bit OP SYS's dont detect all of that and cant use it especially on vista where vista has to address everything on its own without allowing the game to direct the addressing of data on ram. I just thought I would ask if this long addressing method that A 32bit OP SYS would use would screw performance.

Edit: just so those who dont know DDR2 and DDR3 have different slots and I had a motherboard that had slots for both so dont upgrade from DD2 to DD3 if you dont have the extra slots for DD3

Bob2004:
You know, it would be really nice if you could try and use proper grammar and sentence structure, and try and explain your question clearly - it's really hard to work out exactly what you're talking about, which makes it really hard for anyone to try and answer you. Anyway...

Are you sure you mean the patch which allows 32-bit versions of Windows to address more memory? Because it sounds like you're talking about something completely different. 3.6GBs of memory is roughly what a 32-bit OS can address by default, so I don't think you have that patch installed (unless you have exactly 3.6GBs of RAM, which I doubt).

What it sounds like you're talking about is something totally different. By default, applications running under Windows can each only address up to 2GB of RAM - regardless of how much RAM you actually have, that is the maximum amount they can use (and it includes VRAM too, not just main memory).

However, there is a flag which can be set for an application at compile time (or I think is automatically set for every 64-bit executable) which makes that application "Large Address Aware". Basically, it allows that application to address more than 2GB of memory.

It is disabled by default, and most application developers don't usually enable it since most games don't need it, and it could, in theory, potentially cause compatibility problems. Occasionally some developers release a patch for their game enabling it - a recent example of this would be Skyrim, which initially lacked this feature, but after lots of people complained about not being able to make use of all their memory, had a update released to enable it.

I don't know if HellGate: London ever had a patch made containing that feature - frankly, I don't know why such an old game would need it, and I don't think anyone had more than 2GB of RAM back then anyway. But if that's what you're talking about, then it won't have any impact on any other applications at all - in terms of the amount of memory they can address, or in terms of performance.

punyloony:

--- Quote from: Bob2004 on February 29, 2012, 11:56:06 PM ---You know, it would be really nice if you could try and use proper grammar and sentence structure, and try and explain your question clearly - it's really hard to work out exactly what you're talking about, which makes it really hard for anyone to try and answer you. Anyway...

Are you sure you mean the patch which allows 32-bit versions of Windows to address more memory? Because it sounds like you're talking about something completely different. 3.6GBs of memory is roughly what a 32-bit OS can address by default, so I don't think you have that patch installed (unless you have exactly 3.6GBs of RAM, which I doubt).

What it sounds like you're talking about is something totally different. By default, applications running under Windows can each only address up to 2GB of RAM - regardless of how much RAM you actually have, that is the maximum amount they can use (and it includes VRAM too, not just main memory).

However, there is a flag which can be set for an application at compile time (or I think is automatically set for every 64-bit executable) which makes that application "Large Address Aware". Basically, it allows that application to address more than 2GB of memory.

It is disabled by default, and most application developers don't usually enable it since most games don't need it, and it could, in theory, potentially cause compatibility problems. Occasionally some developers release a patch for their game enabling it - a recent example of this would be Skyrim, which initially lacked this feature, but after lots of people complained about not being able to make use of all their memory, had a update released to enable it.

I don't know if HellGate: London ever had a patch made containing that feature - frankly, I don't know why such an old game would need it, and I don't think anyone had more than 2GB of RAM back then anyway. But if that's what you're talking about, then it won't have any impact on any other applications at all - in terms of the amount of memory they can address, or in terms of performance.

--- End quote ---
Unfutanatly looking in the windows specs display before the patch it only said I had 1.6gigs somthing when I had 2gigs. then when I used the patch I had a full 2gigs. then I got the smallist memory upgrade that I could find which was 4gigs and is said 3.6gigs in the same spec display. that is what I know.

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