Vista only uses 4gb I have 8 in should I take some out?

[CBJ023]

Hi everyone. I recently build my gaming PC and bought 2x4gb of RAM. Thtwo things I didn't buy was Win. 7 and a HDD. I took my old harddrive from another PC and installed Vista so I could play my games now rather than wait the extra few months to get the new HDD and Win 7. Only problem is Vista can only use 4gb of RAM (I have Vista 32bit) I have 8gb installed. It works fine and everything, I'm just wondering if I should remove the second RAM stick? Could it cause any problems since Vista cant use over 4? Thank you!

 

[OhSnapWord]

You could leave it in and install a 64-bit OS which would allow you to use all 8 GB.

To answer your question though, no, you will not hurt anything by removing the extra 4GB of RAM.

 

[naeem.ebrahimjee]

Windows 32bit can only address 4gb max (of which a small portion is used by Windows / Bios etc so you will only see about 3.5Gb of that). Weather you put 4gb of 32gb of RAM into your system this will not change.

Keeping 8gb inside your case whilst only 4gb is used is not really an issue but if you are uneasy take one 4gb chip out until you get your new OS. Assuming your hardware can address 8gb + of RAM (most modern motherboards are limited to 32gb / 64gb) there will not be any problems. Windows 32-bit does not stop you installing more RAM it just can't make use of it....

 

[Celery]

Go ahead and leave the mems in to take advantage of dual channels. You also can use a cache program to use the extra memory for caching.

 

[CBJ023]

Ok thank you all for the replies! I would go 64 bit but I only had a 32 bit install disk for Vista it was either that or Windows 98 which I found on a floppy disk haha

 

[Jesusfrk611]

If you have the money I'd recommend buying Windows 7 64 bit. It's a better OS and will take advantage of that full 8GB.

 

[CBJ023]

I will definitely be upgrading to Windows 7 that's out of the question for gaming and Vista loves to crash. Only reason I'm waiting is because I have a maybe 7 year old HDD in right now because I didn't have te money for a new one and for Windows 7 I'll be getting both in a few months.