Building New XP Pro Computer

[Springdale]

Good afternoon MSFN,

I'm going to building a new Windows XP Professional (32 bit) computer with the new intel Core i7 920. It seems that it can be possible, but what worries me is not choosing Vista and I had many problems in the past with it on my IBM Thinkpad T60p, so I went back to windows 2000 Pro. I hear that XP has greatly matured and performance is rock solid, but it's 32bit and limited to only 4GB.

Here is my Current System build for Windows XP with SP3:

• DFI LANPARTY JR X58-T3H6 Micro ATX
  
• Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz
  
• G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
  
• (2X) XFX PVT98GYDLH GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3
  
• (2x) Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
  
• RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-730SS 730W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready
  
• eMachines Nexgen Micro-ATX Case
  

Is it true you can use PAE to enable more than 4GB of memory used in XP pro, just like Server 2003? It seems too good to be true, but that alone can allow me to use the 1GB ram of SLI without it eating my system memory, which wont leave me under 3GB of available memory. I honestly don't want to use Server 2k3 since XP is designed for gaming usage.

Thanks all who read this and who that willing to help me out on this computer. I'm really excited since I never built a computer form scratch and one that is really powerful.

[iamtheky]

"PAE is the added ability of the IA32 processor to address more than 4 GB of physical memory. The following operating systems can use PAE to take advantage of physical memory beyond 4 GB:

* Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server

* Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server

* Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition

* Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition" -1

the confusion probably arises because:

"Although support for PAE memory is typically associated with support for more than 4 GB of RAM, PAE can be enabled on Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, and later 32-bit versions of Windows to support hardware enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP)." -2

1) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283037

2) http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platf...PAE/PAEdrv.mspx

[IcemanND]

Actually you really only get 3gb of not 4gb but let's not go there.

[cluberti]

Well, you do get 4GB of memory regardless of what the OS is allowed to do, the other 1GB (or whatever the skew is depending on your hardware and BIOS) is used to shadow memory from components installed on the box.

And /PAE on an XP x86 box does give the ability to create a pagefile larger than 4GB that is one large file, and is used for hardware DEP. But if you want to "see" all 4GB (or more, if it's installed), you need an x64 OS. Note that /PAE on server-class Windows versions only allows usage of the RAM above 4GB for storage of data, not code execution, and the applications using the /PAE window to utilize said RAM have to do their own memory management of the window, and also map it into and out of their process space in the initial 2GB (or 3GB, with /3GB in boot.ini) VA space.

It's not pretty, and if you need more than 4GB, you should simply use an x64 OS. Much cleaner, less restrictions, and less overhead on the OS.

[iamtheky]

4GB minus peripheral and system allocation, naturally. My cards are so antiquated I can still free just under 3.5

Very true though on most of the more modern systems i support,and judging by the OPs hardware 3GB will probably be all thats left after the system allocates its share. But that is by no means a reason to go with less, because if you put in 3GB its still going to take the same allocation and leave you with around 2GB free.