If i were to get the 2gb stick. if i use it on a x86 will it run at 1024. or you can only use them on a x64?
I think you're confusing 32 bit Operating Systems and 64 bit Operating Systems. Windows XP 32 bit will be able to utilize 4 GB of RAM whereas a 64 bit version of Windows can exceed 4 GB. Either way, both will recognize your 2 GB.
thanks for the info. i just needed to know that. so if i get a 2 gb i can still use it on the bit system?
Yes. However, if you ever bought a new motherboard that took a different type of memory, such as DDR3, and your current memory is DDR2, then it wouldn't be compatible. However, just changing your OS from 32 bit to 64 bit won't cause a problem.
The first thing you need to do is make sure your mother board supports what you have and your cpu wil utilizeit also What I mean is if you have a cpu that will run 400mhz if your not going to over clock it just buy ram at that speed 800 for ddr2. Windows 32bit will only support 3gigs .
While I can understand where you get your number of 3 GB limit, the limit for 32 bit OS from MS is 4 GB for NT, 2K, and XP. You can read the details directly from MS. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx For those that don't want to read the article, here's the reason that I said it was understandable to think 3 GB was the limit. "The virtual address space of processes and applications is still limited to 2 GB unless the /3GB switch is used in the Boot.ini file." This is the virtual memory that is used by the Windows kernel. However, the system will still recognize 4 GB, which is extremely useful if you're running virtual machines. It's kind of off the topic, since we already answered the user's question, but I don't want future readers to be confused.
