Why do some mother boards have a limit like 1 gig or 512 megs? They should all be able to address around 4 gigs of memory, 2^32, right?
Why do some mother boards have a limit like 1 gig or 512 megs? They should all be able to address around 4 gigs of memory, 2^32, right?
In theroy yes they could be able to address 4gb of memory, but in implementation its up to the chipset designers, only high end machines like servers, workstations for 3d modeling, .... and such need that much memory so for a commercial chipset the designer normally lowers this level a bit to cut down on the complexity of the circutry in the chipset, also the older the chipset the less memory that the pc needed at the time. Todays chipsets can take full advantage of the 4gb memory range (KT 266A, KT333, KT400, ......) just some motherboard makers limit the amount of ram that can be used.
"only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and im not sure about the former." - albert einstein
Yep, totaly up to the chipset. I have 3 slot for RAM, or, room for 1.5 gigs (512*3), but because the chipset only handles 512, any I add after that is no used.
Annoying cuz I look in the board and see empty spots that want to be filled
You use diiferent sizes of RAM on your computer.
Cause you can patch your BIOS a break this standard value, but your problem is, that not all motherboard chipsets are supporting high RAM.
So I have tuned my PC and patched the BIOS.
Now I can use upto 256 MB RAM maximum stick.
And I have 6 slots.
And soon I gonna take 6x256 RAM on a Pentium-MMX 200, that was tuned to AMD k6-2 550 (+3D now)!!!
Before, I could only use upto near 350 MB RAM on the motherboard!!!