Ram disk and 3gb Limitation in XP

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

I figure I will have to eventually have everything 64 bit Vista.

Not yet however. All of my systems are Vista Ready and Quad or Penryn Ready now.

Soooo ... I am considering upgrading to 8GB Ram in my XP Pro main system ... I am wondering if I can make a 4-6gb Ram drive to enhance speed and not sweat the goofiness and tweaks to deal with XP's supposed answer to that fix.

Rather than taking the plunge and seeing if it works ... I figured I would just ask if others have done it.

This likely will increase speed far greater than 64 bit and fatten my system up to be vista ready when I think it has matured.

Soooo ... Has anyone any experience in this? Done this? Have any ideas?

There are a few choices out there and mature ram disk softwares to choose from ...

[Capper]

Sounds like a great experiment for an HL User Guide/Review

[Athildja-x64]

You will still need to go with 64 bit even with Vista, to use all 8GB.

Ath

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

You may be right ... but ...Are you sure that a 4-6GB ramdisk won't bypass that issue as far as resource usage?

Ram can be seen but not allocated beyond 3.25GB hence not utilized by Windows XP [Without tweaks up to 4gb] ... but will that eliminate a ram drive from being made with those overage resources? [I really don't know for sure]

[Panda Man]

That's not actually true, 32-bit os's just can't address over 4GB without serious hacks/tweaks, that includes the RAM and cache's (HDD, CPU, etc. etc.). So this won't work. :(

[screwballl]

the ram disk is seen as a hard drive, not system memory... but as long as you set the swap file there it should help out quite a bit...

[Athildja-x64]

theoretically yes you can set up the RAM drive.
The issue will come with finding software that will allow the RAM drive outside of Vista.
I do not believe there is anything like that available.

[Tech Geek Deluxe]

screwball ... that is what I was suspecting ... then I was going to place the swap and other performance files and softwares to autoload into the ramdrive.

Just ... I think it will work ... I will need that Ram eventually ... I don't want to do Vista Yet ... Soooo if it doesn't work ... then I'll likely have to do Vista Sooner or another 64 bit OS.

[Stormcrow]

Theres always XP 64-bit, it has alright support if your adamant about not going with Vista.

[Athildja-x64]

I have been running Vista x64 and so far I have not had any major issues with applications or drivers.
All of the major vendors have gotten behind vista and there are several MS supplied drivers for things like wireless and printers.
I run Vista x64 on my laptop, desktop and other workstations, including my Main HTPC.
Vista is actually a more full featured OS and has more support right now than any other OS that MS has ever released.
The people that complain about it are probably the same ones that complained when every other OS from MS was released or do not remember When XP first came out and the nightmare that was.