intercodes said:Kadahaf,
And depending on the motherboard , the max RAM supported is between 2GB - 4GB for a 32 bit processor.
Actually, its not the CPU wich is limited to 4GB of RAM. Its the OS. (and the mobo ofcourse)
All modern 32bit CPU's are capable of adressing 64GB of RAM.
Every CPU from the 386 to the latest Pentium and Athlon processors has used a 32-bit architecture, which means that the internal registers of the CPU are 32 bits wide. In other words, 32 bits of data are the most the CPU can handle on a single instruction cycle, and a block of data that size is considered to be one ‘word’ of data for that CPU. A ‘word’ not only determines the size of a program instruction, but also the maximum size of a RAM location that the CPU can address. This turns out to be 4,294,967,295, which means that a 32-bit architecture can use a maximum of 4 GB of RAM. By comparison, a 64-bit architecture can address 16 exabytes (16 billion GB) of RAM.
intercodes said:
80386DX Adress bus: 32-bit
80486SX Adress bus: 32-bit
80486DX Adress bus: 32-bit
Pentium Adress bus: 32-bit
Pentium Pro Adress bus: 36 bit
Pentium II Adress bus: 36 bit
Pentium III Adress bus: 36 bit
Intel® Celeron®
General Specs of the Celeron Family:
Internal Register Size: 32-bit
Data I/O Bus Width: 64-bit
Memory Address Bus Width: 36-bit
Maximum Memory: 64 GB
Although 36-bit addressing is technically a change in processor technology, an OS must support 36-bit addressing to take advantage of this capability. Microsoft has built 36-bit addressing support into Win2K's kernel. However, Microsoft has stated that only selected Win2K versions, which will likely be Win2K AS and Datacenter, will support 36-bit addressing. At press time, Win2K AS and Datacenter are the only Win2K versions that provide 36-bit addressing support.