I have a DELL PC and was surprised to learn from the manual and a RAM vendor, that it's limited to 4GB of RAM; that is 4 X 1GB DDR2.

It came with Windows Vista 32 Bit and by upgrading the BIOS,  I now run XP Pro 64 Bit.

I'm very happy with this setup, but would really like to upgrade my RAM to 4 X 2GB.

Can anybody through any light on this subject?

I just find it hard to believe that my PC has such a limit.  :-(

BTW I have a 2.4 Ghz Intel Quad core.

Many thanks for any advice.  :-)

As far as I know:

Windows 32bits is limited to 4 Gb.
Windows 64bits has no such limit.

it might be a motherboard limitation - some dont have the capacity for more ram.  mine is limited to a total of 8gigs, and its maxed out right now - i'd love to shove a few more sticks in there, but there is no room. 
i also run xp 64 pro.

edit:  side note, it doesnt matter if i use two sticks that equal 8 gigs for mine, or 4 sticks of 2 gigs each, my cap (top limit) will remain 8gigs because thats all my MotherBoard can handle.

this might be your own limit - 4 gigs no matter how you configure it.

What hardware limit were you informed exactly? Four GB or 4 slots? It's different things. If the limit is 4GB, then there's nothing to be done, I think. If the limit is 4 slots, maybe you can replace your existing 4x1GB sticks by 4x2GB sticks.

You can probably  replace the MotherBoard, but if you do you will have to re-activate your various software. You might not if you use the same CPU .

www.newegg.com has a lot of motherboards, also a lot of others do.

Yes I have seen PCs that won't take more than 4GB RAM its a motherboard design limitation.

Hi Artur,
I'm limited to 4GB; that is 4 X 1GB. I'd just like to know, why! It must be as somebody else has already said; that it's all my motherboard can cope with.

This is all news to me as I always thought, up until now, that I could place 2GB sticks where the 1GB sticks are.  :-(

If you know the specific model number of your dell, you can check on their support section at
www.dell.com.

I think my question has now been answered aquiavic. Thank you! I'll check the Dell site, but won't hold my breath.   LOL

Attached Link: Crucial

Thanks for that NightVoice. I did the scan and it confirmed what I suspected and others have said. I can only have four GB on this machine. Well at least I know for sure now.   :-(

One positive thing is that I have not had a crash through lack of resources since going to XP Pro. 64 Bit. :-)

Alas yes some motherboards do have limits in terms of size of individual RAM chips, and total RAM.

Only the new i7s or special server motherboards can usually take more thna 8 gigs of RAM.
and only motherboards of about oh 3?? years or younger can take more than 4 gigs

My other PC (net/games)  is a dual core Intel CPU, with an ASUS P5B deluxe motherboard,
http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1295&l1=3&l2=11&l3=307
since it's recent and I chose a good motherboard, it can take up to 8 gigs of RAM

My art rig (this one I'm on) is ASUS Striker Extreme with a dual core CPU
http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=1439&l1=3&l2=11&l3=397&l4=0
Again 8 GIGs RAM,
Now those two boards are basically the same "style" as it were, same CPUs can mostly be used in them though the Striker Extreme is newer and supports a new chip type
They use DDR2 RAM, which you install in pairs.

the new i7 Intel CPUs need a new type of motherboard completely from those two above, they use DDR3 RAM, a newer type and NOT compatible with older DDR2 systems

Thiss the motherboard I'd generally recommend now, ASUS P6T v2 Deluxe
http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=2746&l1=3&l2=179&l3=815&l4=0
It can take up to 6 chips, i7s use RAM chips in trios, very important to know that and it's DDR3 ram! That board can take up to a total of 24 gigs of ram!!

when older PCs were made, 64 bit wasn't out, thus, practical limit of 4 GIGs and use by Windows of only 2 GIGs max per application (and WIndows could only use more than 2 gigs with a "trick" that let it use up to 3.5 gigs.
 
Oh, 64 bit SUPER computers existed, but not for us mere mortals ;)

the amount of RAM a computer can actually access, is (roughly) based off it's "Bits" so it's a limit of 4 gigs for 32 bit and 16.8 BILLION terabytes for 64 bit!!!
yes I did say 16.8 billion terabytes, lol
terabyte = 1,000 Gigabytes

for those not familar with such, the "bits" are binary numbers, so, they increase in power to the square of the original number, so, very roughly, 4 billion x 4 billion = a whole heck of a lot!

therefor, 64 bit systems should last us a good long while!! ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit
Servers now can have 128 GIG RAM....think of that for Vue...muhahahahaha!!!  :thumbupboth:

Sorry if that doesn't directly help you Vege-mite, but hope it's of use to folks :)

Thanks Steven. It all sounds like mind boggling stuff.    LOL

Vege-Mite,
hehe sorry bud!! ;)
If you do get a new machine in near future, get one with an i7 CPU and motherboard, a GOOD motherboard, and you should have one hell of a machine!
VaVAVROOOOOM!!! :p

Could be worse.  Until I save up for the i7 and 12gig I am currently puttering on an old system that holds 512MB max! :)

On the good side when you work with a system with low mem for a long time you certainly learn how to squeeze out every drop of memory you can get!

I am maxed out at 8 gigs can't get anymore onto my mother board. My next build will fix this LOL!

If you know the exact brand name and specification of your motherboard, there might be a slight chance, that there are newest/latest BIOS-updates and mainboard chipset drivers available, which, for instance, could allow the use of a faster CPU, which still would fit on the mainboard's CPU-slot, or maybe could open the barrier of 1 GB RAM sticks to use larger RAM sticks to get more of 4 GB Ram.

To run through a BIOS-flash process is basically an easy task if you're used to do those things, but on the other hand, if you mess up one step during this process, it could damage your existing BIOS and the PC wouldn't run no more ...
So this is only something for an experienced hardware user, not for someone with only basic knowledge in the hardware area ...

Does any application actually use 6 gig or more, Vue has not gone abouve 5.5 for me so far (i7 6 gig ddr3) I really want to see a reason as to buying another 6 gig .....

If you have gone up to 5.5 Gig with Vue alone, you would have reached the limit while opening the standalone renderer with your main scene still open.

Sorry this is obviously including the 1.5 gig or whaever it is used by windows 7 and is whilst rendering, doesn't seem to use much at all when moving stuff around .

andrewbell, it all depends on the kind of images you make. Your gallery is empty so I can't judge if you'll need 8GB or not, so let me show you some of my images which would require very close to 8GB.

Look at the green areas in this one. Those are millions of trees.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1889407

Again in the next one, a huge number of trees and thousands of buildings. The mountains in the background are several terrains with 4096x4096.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1863411

Not as demanding as the previous ones, these two also have very dense ecosystems.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1849011
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1763313

So, if you want to do similar scenes, I'd definitely recommend very close to 8GB.

We use Dells at work, the words lowest bidder comes to mind when I see a Dell.
To be fair most big name PCs are sadly rubbish and overpriced and Dell are probably just the worst of em.
Some of their high end models look good but cost way more than is sane.
For home I always buy the name brand components and either do it myself or get the shop to.

Love the pics ! Amazing !  Is that 8 gig of ddr2 or ddr3 ? because surely 6 gig of ddr3 is better than 8 of ddr2? .... could be completley wrong!

I made a scene last night that I have no intension of rendering it had 3 ecosysems in it about 30 reflective spheres 12 poser characters, water, vast mountains (basically as much stuff as i could put in a scene Ram did not go above 4.5 gig usage (inc windows) and was 450,000,000 polygons! So I had no problem with putting scene together no  slow down. Then I hit render and it all went wrong it said it was going to take about 4 weeks to render on ultra quality however when it started the render ram usage went down to 2 gig including windows usage. I have no intension of rendering this piece because it would take too long... but I don't feel anything I throw at it is going to use my full 6 gig ddr 3.

I have been thinking of reviving some of my older PC's and using them as Render Cow nodes. A couple systems with only 2 gb of ram. My current Workstation is a few years old and limited to 4gb. I wonder has anyone looked at difference in render time with respect to multiple systems(even lower end stuff) vs more memory on your main system?

Quote - "Is that 8 gig of ddr2 or ddr3"

That's DDR2. The main advantages of DDR3 are higher speed and less power usage.

Quote - "...basically as much stuff as i could put in a scene Ram did not go above 4.5 gig usage (inc windows) and was 450,000,000 polygons..."

450 million polygons isn't too much. The two first scenes I showed reached more than 500 billion polygons... :-)

Quote - "Then I hit render and it all went wrong it said it was going to take about 4 weeks to render on ultra quality however when it started the render ram usage went down to 2 gig including windows usage."

Please, don't use the preset render settings. I don't understand why so many people use those as they are all rubbish, IMO. For example, Ultra:

• the advanced effects settings (77%) are waaaaay above what is reasonable for 99% of the situations, unnecessarily increasing the render time.
• the AA settings (4/28/80) are waaaay below what is necessary for most scenes with clouds or vegetation.

So, this preset is totally inconsistent, not good for any scene I can think of. The other presets have similar inconsistencies. The preset render settings in general are one of the very few things that I heavily criticize in Vue (otherwise, I love Vue to bits... :-)).
Instead, use "user settings". Experiment until you reach a good balance between speed and quality and you can save countless hours of render time that you could instead be using to be creative.

Quote - Please, don't use the preset render settings. I don't understand why so many people use those as they are all rubbish, IMO. For example, Ultra:

• the advanced effects settings (77%) are waaaaay above what is reasonable for 99% of the situations, unnecessarily increasing the render time.
• the AA settings (4/28/80) are waaaay below what is necessary for most scenes with clouds or vegetation.

So, this preset is totally inconsistent, not good for any scene I can think of. The other presets have similar inconsistencies. The preset render settings in general are one of the very few things that I heavily criticize in Vue (otherwise, I love Vue to bits... :-)).
Instead, use "user settings". Experiment until you reach a good balance between speed and quality and you can save countless hours of render time that you could instead be using to be creative.

If people are anything like me, they just don't understand the different settings.

For instance, what do you mean by the AA settings 4/28/80  ?

That's why the presets supplied by e-on are used so much.

Quote - "If people are anything like me, they just don't understand the different settings."

That's what the manual is there for, together with experimentation and forums like this one. :-)
Do you mean I'm one of the few that actually read the Vue manual? :-)

Quote - "For instance, what do you mean by the AA settings 4/28/80"

This directly relates to the dialog box where you define Anti-Aliasing settings in detail. In the render settings dialog box, click on Edit in the section "anti-aliasing" and you'll be taken to a dialog box with several options. The numbers 4/28/80 relate to the only numbers which are in this box, in what regards object anti-aliasing, respectively minimum sub-rays per pixel, maximum sub-rays per pixel and quality threshold. If you don't know what these things mean, than you're not taking full advantage of what Vue has to offer and therefore your images don't have the quality that they could have and your render times are not optimized, making you waste time waiting for the renders to finish.

Quote - I have been thinking of reviving some of my older PC's and using them as Render Cow nodes. A couple systems with only 2 gb of ram. My current Workstation is a few years old and limited to 4gb. I wonder has anyone looked at difference in render time with respect to multiple systems(even lower end stuff) vs more memory on your main system?

=GOOD= Idea!

And there will be a difference in rendertimes with systems with less memory; they hit the old swap file a lot harder, and hard drive access times are still the biggest bottleneck to system speed that exists. And the system you will have to be most wary of is your workstation; the rendercows are a lot more forgiving of load than the controlling system is (mainly because the controlling system has to grab a section of RAM to keep the overhead on the managed nodes handy....and the more nodes you add, the bigger that pool grows, and if you are running close to crash, well....).

Your main system will probably turn in the best performance, as it has all the resources resident; and the return from the rendergarden will depend on exactly what you are doing, and how many nodes are doing it. When I built my first garden, the slowest box in it was an Athlon 750 (yes, the original Sega cartridge). I would get one frame of animation out of it for every 20-30 frames from the combined other renderboxes. So the only time I fired that one up was when I rendered a long animation, and even then it was more an experiment than getting significant output from it.

Quote - Do you mean I'm one of the few that actually read the Vue manual? :-)

LOL  That's exactly what I mean.

Thanks for the explanation Artur. I've copied and saved your suggestions.