so my questions is if an application is programed for a 32bit and i have 4 or more GB of ram will that 32 bit application utilize the extra ram or will it only use 3gb or whatever the max of 32bit systems are
A 32bit program can use up to 4GB of ram, but you can still improve 32bit performance by having more than 4GB system ram. This is because the operating system, services, and background apps also use ram (some vista64 systems with lots of background apps can use as much as 2GB).