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In computing, the term 3 GB barrier refers to a limitation of some 32-bit operating systems running on x86 microprocessors. It prevents the operating systems from using all of 4 GiB (4 × 10243 bytes) of main memory. [1] The exact barrier varies by motherboard and I/O device configuration, particularly the size of video RAM; it may be in the ...
Comparison of Microsoft Windows versions. Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of computer software operating systems created by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
2 GB limit. The 2 GB limit refers to a physical memory barrier for a process running on a 32-bit operating system, which can only use a maximum of 2 GB of memory. [ 1 ] The problem mainly affects 32-bit versions of operating systems like Microsoft Windows and Linux, although some variants of the latter can overcome this barrier. [ 2 ]
The 386DX had 32-bit addressing, allowing it to address up to 4 gigabytes (4096 megabytes) of memory. The Motorola 68020 , released in 1984, had a 32-bit address space, giving it a maximum addressable memory limit of 4 GB.
However, "client" versions of 32-bit Windows (Windows XP SP2 and later, Windows Vista, Windows 7) limit physical address space to the first 4 GB for driver compatibility [16] even though these versions do run in PAE mode if NX support is enabled. Windows 8 and later releases will only run on processors which support PAE, in addition to NX and SSE2.
A 32-bit register can store 2 32 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two most common representations, the range is 0 through 4,294,967,295 (2 32 − 1) for representation as an binary number, and −2,147,483,648 (−2 31) through 2,147,483,647 (2 31 − 1) for representation as two's complement.
The primary benefit of moving to 64-bit is the increase in the maximum allocatable random-access memory (RAM). 32-bit editions of Windows XP are limited to a total of 4 gigabytes. Although the theoretical memory limit of a 64-bit computer is about 16 exabytes (17.1 billion gigabytes), Windows XP x64 is limited to 128 GB of physical memory and ...
Windows 3.1 was the last Windows 16-bit operating environment and it could utilize more memory than its predecessors. Microsoft also released special versions of Windows 3.1 throughout 1992 and 1993; in Europe and Japan, Windows 3.1 was introduced with more language support, while Tandy Video Information System received a special version ...