That does not get more true by many people saying it. 32 bit OS has a 4g limit - not 3.2. it is up to the BIOS to support that - and not hide some area of that for the PCI buffers. Some boards (server boards) do that better than others. I have seen memory available from about 2.8 to 4.0gb - dependeing on the stupidity of the board maker. Server board = 4gb, normal board above 3gb (3.2, 3.6 seeming most common) and some idiots manage to allow only about 2.8gb
Thanks WinstonTJ and all you guys for the additional info. On my existing HP (running Vista Home), it has 3GB of RAM and it does show 3GB in the OS. I am planning on upgrading to Win7 premium 64-bit this weekend. Will report back what I get afterwards.
boli, Do you just have the trading app going? What happens when you open a couple other apps or browsers? Does it light up the other cpu's in the task mgr? Have you had the trading app max out the one cpu while the rest are idle? That would suck.
I haven't tried running other apps. I used that box solely for running TradeStation (for charts). The most that I would run is MSPaint to capture some screenshots, not even browsing the Internet. I was "stunted" because it was the first time I dealt with 8 windows in TaskManager.
Its a bit like splitting hairs don't you think? A 32-bit OS does have a 3.2GB kernel (regardless of the amount of RAM the system has/can address). My experience is with Dell and HP which are limited to 3.2GB to be used and 3.0/2.99GB to be shown. Microsoft RAM specifics are at the link below. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx
Correct. Don't forget that memory from the video-card DISPLACES memory that can be used from MB RAM. So if you've got 512mb video-card memory, that memory is mapped into the address-space from 3.5-4.0gb. This memory can ONLY be used by the video-card for video and nothing else. That means the OS can only use memory from 0-3.5gb. Actually less because other PCI cards and BIOS needs memory-space as well.
Actually it does not HAVE to displace memory - the driver plus the kernel, with the proper chipset, can actually hide the memory out of the application / kernel address space. That said, this is mostly older server motherboards doing that - today it makes no sense to program that or put that into a chip as anyone using a 32 bit operating system should look into the mirror for memory problems. Upgrade to 64 bit and get rid of the problems - there at least the "additional memory" for PCIe buffers can alway sbe mapped out of the real memory.
I want to again thank all of you who commented in this thread. I have just upgraded to Windows 7 64-bit on this new box and I am seeing all 12GB of memory. In addition, it seems that the workload of starting TradeStation was more evenly spread among the different cores. (See attached). I will monitor the usage tomorrow during market hours.
I have found that even with Windows 7 x64 you will always see lopsided CPU usage. My findings are: 1. Hyperthreading CPU units have less usage 2. Graphics applications and applications using DDE will cause higher usage on one CPU. Really though, it does not really matter too much - only as long as none of the CPUs are getting maxed out during peak usage.
I had a similar situation and installed process lasso, http://www.bitsum.com/prolasso.php Using this program I was able to assign different apps to specific cores. This made all cores run much more even and smooth. Workstation runs much better. Example Core 0- Esignal, IB TWS Core 1 - Esignal Data Manager, Tradestation Core 2 - shared among other low process trading software or share with Core 1 apps Core 3 - Non Trading related apps