I have upgraded to 4GB of RAM and want to know how I have to configure my computer to get the most advantage from this. I have a new Dell with the XP PRO SP2 OS, dual core 2.4 processor, 2 SATA HD's, 2 DVD drives and is 32bit. Thanks in advance.
Thats alot of memory you have there, more than enough infact lol If you have bought say 2 matching pairs of ram then you could use dual channel by putting both sticks into the same coloured slots on the motherboard, this helps out the cpu alot by having two ram pipelines instead of just the one. Ofcourse theres also overclocking ram to think of but i would think you would be fine as you are.
You could check the timings on your motherboard bios to ensure you are getting the top end out of your memory.Most updated motherboards will auto set the memory where some you have to manually adjust.
@gary431 A flaw inherent in all 32 bit operating systems is that the maximum amount of memory available to be used by the user is 3GB. There are ways around this such as memory mapping but it causes system instability in many cases. A operating system like Windows XP x64 is a 64 bit operating system and can handle the 4GB but Windows x64 does not handle 32 bit apps that well all the times. And nearly all programs are written in 32 bit.
Did you bother reading my post? I stated that... In a 32 bit operating sytem you will never see a full 4GB.
I to maxed out and have 4 gigs of ram and was disapointed when I only can use 3 gigs. So now what do I do to get the most out of my system do I upgrade to 64 bit os?
In a reality, no desktop system will use the full 4GB, and going to a 64 bit OS could make some of your programs unusable/unstable.