Notebook Makers Moving to 4 GB Memory As Standard

akintayo writes "Digitimes reports that first-tier notebook manufacturers are increasing the standard installed memory from the current 1 GB to 4GB. They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market. The glut is supposedly due to increased manufacturing capacity and the slow adoption of Microsoft's Vista operating system. The proposed move is especially interesting, given that 32-bit Vista and XP cannot access 4 GB of memory. They have a practical 3.1 — 3.3 GB limit. With Vista SP1 it seems that Microsoft has decided to fix the problem by reporting the installed memory rather than the available memory."

That's great

[G-News.ch (793321)]

Because OS X Leopard CAN access 4GB of RAM. Let's see if Apple also joins the fray. Then again, 4GB is way too much, because after all 640KB should be enough for everyone.

Re:That's great

[boredMDer (640516)]

'...because after all 640KB should be enough for everyone.'

Nope, that isn't played out.

At all.

And of course... [wired.com]:
"Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again."

Silly quotations do have a way of floating like rumors.

Well, the truth starts here.

He never said it.

Re:That's great

[LaughingCoder (914424)]

I like the fact that your \. ID is in the 640Ks

Re:That's great

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

He never said it.

He may not have said it, but he believed it;

Bill Gates Challenges and Strategy Memo (16 May 1991)

I laid out memory so the bottom 640K was general purpose RAM and the upper 384 I reserved for video and ROM, and things like that. That is why they talk about the 640K limit. It is actually a limit, not of the software, in any way, shape, or form, it is the limit of the microprocessor. That thing generates addresses, 20-bits addresses, that only can address a megabyte of memory. And, therefore, all the applications are tied to that limit. It was ten times what we had before. But to my surprise, we ran out of that address base for applications within--oh five or six years people were complaining.

Re:That's great

[Macthorpe (960048)]

You should have just gotten an Apple and you are able to run most any OS that you want

Wow, for a minute there you almost had me believing that the only reason I can't do that on any other machine is because of artificial restrictions that Apple enforce.

How about I stick to what I have now so I don't have to buy an overpriced desktop, and then if Apple decide that I'm allowed to run OS X on something they didn't build, I might consider booting it.

Unlikely, though.

Re:That's great

[Ilgaz (86384)]

You should have just gotten an Apple and you are able to run most any OS that you want

Wow, for a minute there you almost had me believing that the only reason I can't do that on any other machine is because of artificial restrictions that Apple enforce.

How about I stick to what I have now so I don't have to buy an overpriced desktop, and then if Apple decide that I'm allowed to run OS X on something they didn't build, I might consider booting it.

Unlikely, though.

My overpriced Quad G5 which is 2 years old has 16GB Max memory spec and I actually saw it in use on a Pro DTP Workstation.

When I bought it, it was same price as a Quad Xeon workstation. I was happy with the G5 Technology (unlike G4-Laptop guys) so I opted in for Quad G5.

What Apple lacks are
1) A complete image fix of iMac series. Even if iMac performs 3x faster than a "Black Box Desktop PC", it won't be taken serious.
2) A mini Tower with 2x more space so they won't be bothering with 5400 RPM HD, integrated Gfx card. I am speaking about a bigger Mac Mini.

For generic PC running OS X? Half of OS X'es power comes from Apple knowing their desktop stuff out there and Taiwan no-name card manufacturers can't manage to get into those machines.

s/nothing/very little/

[pjt33 (739471)]

Surely you should say "There's very little in this world...". Otherwise all /.ers would have girlfriends.

Re:s/nothing/very little/

[LiquidCoooled (634315)]

If you followed my instructions at the very least you would have part of a girlfriend and an arrest warrant.

Re:That's great

[bhtooefr (649901)]

Uh, what?

Running a 64-bit OS, you can access the board's maximum (there aren't any boards that can max out the 40 or 48-bit address space of existing EM64T/AMD64 CPUs) memory.

Running a 32-bit non-Windows OS with PAE enabled, you can access up to 16 GiB (2^36 bytes) of physical RAM.

Running a 32-bit Windows server OS with PAE enabled, you can also access up to 16 GiB of RAM.

However, even with PAE enabled, Windows XP and Vista 32-bit won't let you access anything past 4 GiB, because of some legacy hardware that could barf if it were handed an address higher than 4 GiB.

Fix the problem by misleading the customer?

[Naito (667851)]

What an ingenious solution! No wonder Microsoft is the leading innovator in IT! That's SO innovative it makes me sick. It's hard enough trying to explain to customers why they shouldn't waste their money on 4GB of memory and a 1GB video card only to lose a quarter of it in real life, now the OS is trying actively trying to make me look like a liar too.

Re:Fix the problem by misleading the customer?

[IhuntCIA (1099827)]

In boot.ini file add switch /PAE at the end of multi(0)disk.. line

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer /PAE

It will not solve Your PR problem nor will solve the problem with incorrect reporting of available RAM, but will allow 32-bit Windows XP Professional to use all of it. In my experience, most programs / games can't use all 4GB of RAM, but if user is running more than one RAM hungry application (multitasks), 4GBs becomes useful.
Also we have to think about future Vista service packs so, 4GB is must have :)

Re:Fix the problem by misleading the customer?

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

In boot.ini file add switch /PAE at the end of multi(0)disk.. line

That's not such a good idea.

The reason PAE mode isn't enabled by default is because it conflicts with DMA. Enabling it may make your Windows system even more unstable.

Re:Fix the problem by misleading the customer?

[Cyberax (705495)]

Vista x64 is a regression in functionality. For one thing, it _requires_ signed drivers.

Re:Fix the problem by misleading the customer?

[Cyberax (705495)]

I don't care about userspace drivers (I'm porting FUSE to Windows in my spare time, for God's sake!).

But Vista requires _signed_ _kernel-mode_ _drivers_. It won't load unsigned drivers, and there's NO user override for this 'feature'. Let me repeat: Microsoft does not allow you to run some types of code on your computer.

You can turn on 'test certificate root' which allows to use self-signed certificate, but it is hard to do for a common user, causes DRMed content to stop playing and displays 'test mode' icon.

Oh just jump to 64bit already MS

[rolfwind (528248)]

Stop with the kludges and force the developers along. 32 bit came with the 386 era and lasted a good while - a very good run indeed. 64 bit would last beyond our lifetimes anyway, I doubt we will even come close to the limits of addressable memory there (hopefully this isn't the new 640k comment) -- so there is no point in stalling it indefinitely.

Article doesn't say what summary says

[JOrgePeixoto (853808)]

From the summary: "They claim the move is an attempt to shore up the costs of DRAM chips, which are currently depressed because of a glut in market."

The article says: "While first-tier notebook vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Toshiba are planning to roll out 4GB notebooks starting from the first quarter of 2008, the move is expected to give a boost to the DRAM market, according to memory module makers."

The article does not say that this is a deliberate attempt to increase DRAM price. And if it was, wouldn't it be illegal?

Solution: Make More Wiis

[Bandman (86149)]

It sounds like they should be making wiis and not memory. Solve a few problems at once

Is it really due to "glut in market" ?

[GreatBunzinni (642500)]

Laptops, which have been a nice fat cash cow to OEMs, are steadily becoming cheaper and cheaper. Nowadays, we have retailers selling laptops for about 500 euros with specs that a couple of year ago were selling for a lot more than 1500 euros. A while back the average laptop price tag was about 1200 euros and nowadays it went down to 800 euros. That's a heck of a revenue cut.

So the OEMs are forced to add another fancy selling point, like upgrading the specs once again, in order to keep making the big bucks. They don't give a damn if it brings any added value to the product or if it even functions properly. What matters is some fancy little side remark on the laptop's brochure that makes their fancy little product be picked by the vast hordes of consuming sheep. Who cares if it makes sense or if it's even usable. What's important is that them flock falls for that "OMG! IT'S N+1!!!" and promptly spend their cash, specially for the "it's bigger than my neighbour's" bragging rights.

This sort of thing isn't exactly new. In fact, it's the repeat of another similar marketing push, which was the "32-to-64bit" campaign. The fancy stickers advertising the new and improved 64bit 'puters for the "OMG IT'S TWICE THE BITS!!" effect were all over the place, which earned quite a few hardware sales. Yet, the fact is that the brand new 64-bit 'puter could only run on the 32-bit legacy mode, as they were shipped with a 32-bit operating system and the OEMs shipped hardware without ever thinking on releasing 64-bit drivers or even releasing the hardware specs.

So those OEMs will, once again, sell hardware that will not be usable by the user, at least as advertised. It doesn't matter to them. The only thing that matters is the sales revenue, specially in this day and age where we are starting to see sub-300 euro hardware. And screw the consumer.

Reminds me of an old Microsoft joke

[UnknowingFool (672806)]

How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?

None. Microsoft just redefines darkness as the standard.

Re:Hey!

[Roane (1075393)]

In another few years, I might be able to run Eclipse.

Re:Makes me feel old

[Metasquares (555685)]

Well back in my day we shifted disks on an abacus and made the beeping noises ourselves! :)

Re:Can we get some parental supervision on this si

[Henry V .009 (518000)]

Windows 32-bit operating systems really do not play well with more than 3Gb of memory. Check out what Microsoft says about it [microsoft.com].

Re:Can we get some parental supervision on this si

[SigILL (6475)]

4GB is perfectly sensible for a 32-bit x86; the virtual address space is only 4GB, but the physical address spaces is larger (at least 36 bits on all popular processors).

The trouble is that in contemporary chipsets in 32-bit mode the upper 1G or so of physical memory overlaps with the address space for the PCI bus.

Re:Can someone explain...

[teslar (706653)]

The address space you'd normally use to address memory beyond 3.5gigs (or thereabouts) is reassigned for talking to other stuff. It's a simple 32bit limitation - can't only be talking to the RAM after all. As others have pointed out throughout this thread, the problem does not exist in 64bit architectures.

5 years ago, nobody would have thought that we'd run into this problem at all. Remember those times? Everybody and their mum was just about getting ready to jump onto the 64Bit bandwagon with AMD charging in front. And then, while nobody (especially not AMD) was paying attention, we kinda veered off-course into a multi-core world instead and all of a sudden, people stopped caring about 64bit. After all, you had a larger net performance gain from upgrading to 2 32Bit cores than to one 64Bit one. And now, we're finally running out of address space.

Re:Ubuntu

[Inoshiro (71693)]

32-bit OSes can't reach 2^32 bits of memory due to hardware IO ranges. Duh.

So why didn't you install 64-bit Ubuntu? Flash works'n'everything in 7.10 64-bit. VMware? They have 64-bit builds. Everything else I run is FOSS. There is no reason not to install it, AFAICT!