Vista and ram

[mr. muggles]

I originally had 2 gigs of ram with Windows vista and decided to speed things up a bit and so i bought another 2 gigs.  I installed the ram when I got it and when the system boots up it reads that I have 4098 ram, as it should.  However, when I get to vista when I go into the system in the control panel it reads that I only have 2815 Ram... so where is the extra 1200 ram or so going?  It is the 32-bit premium edition of vista... so it should be capable of handling 4 gigs without much of a hastle as far as i know... thanks

[Broni]

Vista has 4GB RAM limit, but it won't use it all. It'll barely use 3GB, and this is the max, you really want to spend money on. Your Control Panel reading is correct.
Vista with 2GB works perfectly fine.
Explanation here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx

[mr. muggles]

alright... so if I'm running a few different programs that are ram-intensive i should still be okay then I assume?

For instance... some games recommend that if you are using vista you use a MINIMUM of 2 gigs of ram... so I would think going above and beyond that amoun would aid in performance...

[Broni]

You're gonna be fine. You just lost $$$ for unused 1gig.
Even with 2GB + 5GB of VM = 7GB, you have plenty.

[mr. muggles]

so... for VM, i currently have it set for the system to automatically use what's needed... should I change it and do it manually?

Thanks for the help btw.

[Broni]

With your amount of RAM, it really shouldn't matter, but I always used fixed number (one of the reasons: I like to control my computer, not being controlled by it....it's a minor reason, but what the heck...hehehe), which should be roughly 2.5 times your RAM.
If you want to go this way, set min, and max to the same number.