Motherboards and Operating Systems?

[Black Six]

First off carischila, don't post in topics that haven't been posted in for a couple months. Second, don't post in a topic if your post has nothing to do with what is being discussed.

Your post would have been better off in either Forum 42 or Technical Questions and Answers as its own topic. To that end I'm splitting your post and moving it to the latter forum.

Finally, a motherboard is a component in your computer that connects all the other components such as the processor, memory, hard drive, video card, and other expansion cards. That's a bit simplified, but it's the general idea. Different motherboards support different amounts of memory depending on how they're designed.

An operating system is the software installed on your computer's hard drive that lets you use it. Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux, and Mac OS X are all examples of operating systems. Older operating systems tend to support less memory than newer ones, although I don't think you need a 64-bit operating system to have over 4GB of memory.

[eagle5953]

although I don't think you need a 64-bit operating system to have over 4GB of memory.

I believe it does. I have 32 bit XP, and my 4 gigs of RAM shows up as 3.25 GB. I initially thought I had a bad RAM module or that it wasn't seated properly, but it seems to me 32 bit doesn't support 4 GB.

[bicostp]

Yes, you do need a 64 bit OS to see more than about 3.5 gigs of RAM.

As others have said, the motherboard is the main physical board inside the PC. The OS is software that runs on the computer.

The memory controllers on different motherboards may max out at different capacities of RAM. That is, an el cheapo motherboard may only be able to support 2 gigs of RAM, while a server board could handle more than 16 gigs. There are also different speeds and formats (DDR, DDR2, DDR3, Rambus...)

Almost any desktop CPU and motherboard made since 2005 is 64-bit compatible. XP 64-bit was kinda flaky, but the 64 bit versions of Vista and 7 are better.

[tom61]

although I don't think you need a 64-bit operating system to have over 4GB of memory.

I believe it does. I have 32 bit XP, and my 4 gigs of RAM shows up as 3.25 GB. I initially thought I had a bad RAM module or that it wasn't seated properly, but it seems to me 32 bit doesn't support 4 GB.

Same here with Linux. Due to the x86 architecture, 32-bit addressing can only access ~3.25GB. Other architectures may be able to get closer to using a full 2^32 bytes of RAM with 32-bit addressing.

[bicostp]

That limitation is just due to 32 bit addressing, it has nothing to do with the processor architecture.

[timmeh87]

Unless the memory controller is built in to the processor architechture

[samjc3]

Unless the memory controller is built in to the processor architechture

which it might be, although it wouldnt really matter seeing as how all the computers you can buy nowadays are x86 anyway.

[AfroLH]

Unless the memory controller is built in to the processor architechture

which it might be, although it wouldnt really matter seeing as how all the computers you can buy nowadays are x86 anyway.

Actually....
ARM processors are becoming more and more popular nowadays.
Of course the downside is that you cannot run Windows or x86 Programs on ARM.

[samjc3]

Unless the memory controller is built in to the processor architechture

which it might be, although it wouldnt really matter seeing as how all the computers you can buy nowadays are x86 anyway.

Actually....
ARM processors are becoming more and more popular nowadays.
Of course the downside is that you cannot run Windows or x86 Programs on ARM.

the only "computers" that use ARM are handhelds, because ARM has so much better power usage.

[AfroLH]

Unless the memory controller is built in to the processor architechture

which it might be, although it wouldnt really matter seeing as how all the computers you can buy nowadays are x86 anyway.

Actually....
ARM processors are becoming more and more popular nowadays.
Of course the downside is that you cannot run Windows or x86 Programs on ARM.

the only "computers" that use ARM are handhelds, because ARM has so much better power usage.

True.

[MegatronUK]

I think you'll find that the number of ARM based processors in use is way, way more than the number of PC's in the world. They're in virtually everything.

Also, it's not actually the memory controller that defines whether the processor can access more or less than 4GB of RAM. Most of the designs that came after the Intel Pentium III have had 36bit addressing (Intel calls it "PAE") to allow more 4GB of addressable space, it's just you couldn't do anything with it in Windows.

[samjc3]

it's just you couldn't do anything with it in Windows.

so, once again, we find that the worlds most popular OS is screwing us in more ways than previously thought!

[timmeh87]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_A ... ft_Windows" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I hate the x86 architecture, I wish we could replace it. So here's my idea: multi-core hybrid chips with an x86 core and multiple "something way better" cores so we can make the transition over several years and two major windows releases.