Empire, ram, and Windows XP 32

**Matteo123** · 02-18-2009, 00:17

For all the techsavy members of the Org,

I just upgraded my laptop from 2Gb to 4Gb for Empire and already notice an increase in MTWII. I have been reading up online about the limits of XP 32 and how you can adjust your memory in boot.ini to increase the amount of ram that a program like Empire can get. While I understand how to make the change, I was wondering if it was worth it because I will be choking the rest of my system by leaving 1Gb for the rest of the system processes. Any thoughts?

**Allu X** · 02-18-2009, 01:10

To my knowledge the boot.ini file is mainly for choosing which operating system you want to start first if you are Dual Booting, I.e. having XP and Vista. Not sure how you'd set ram for games,

The game would use most of the ram anyway since it'd be your main process,

Oh and also, since you are using a 32 bit version of XP, you do realise that all your 4GB of RAM isn't being used by your OS? Windows XP x32 only recognises 3.2-ish GB of RAM - so you'd need to get a 64-bit OS to use all of it.

**ratbarf** · 02-18-2009, 01:13

General XP should work fine with only 1GB of RAM. If you had 4 GB now you can give 2 to empire and 2 for the system. A reason for a system slowdown maybe because EMpire is calling on programs from regular windows in addition to the RAM you allocated it in the boot.ini. 4 GB should be overkill to play this game well. My system can play MW TW 2 at full and it only has 2 GB of RAM. (though I am not sure what kind of processor you use as well. I have a 2.4 dual athlon 64 bit processor.)

**sbrengard** · 02-18-2009, 01:36

Quite Simple really ...

Windows XP 32-Bit = 3GB of Ram (More like 3.5 but that is another story)
Windows XP 64-Bit = 4GB of Ram (But crappy support)
Vista SP1 64-Bit = 4GB of Ram (and decent support, although options do vary I have been running V64 for over a year without an issue)

Regards,

Steven
Computer Technician

**Belgolas** · 02-18-2009, 01:53

in a 32bit OS a single app/game can not use more then 2 gigs.

**Matteo123** · 02-18-2009, 05:37

Right, normally the 4gb of ram (well less once you subtract what your cards use) is divided as giving 2gb for games and 2gb for the system. However, you can used the 3gb fix where you tell your system to use 3gb for the main application (empire) and then only use 1gb for the system (using boot.ini). In other games this can lead to crashes but my question was to those who know what I am talking about is to see if empire would even need 3gb dedicated to it. As for the rest of my system I am running an Nvidia 512 7900GTX and 2.16 dual core (might overclock to 2.21ish in March).

**Belgolas** · 02-18-2009, 06:03

well if it works then by all means do it. Although I would rather run a 64bit OS(comming from the guy with 12GB of DDR3 :P).

**Mailman653** · 02-18-2009, 08:52

I have 3.5 Ram

If I had some money to spare I'd get a new vid card to replace my Nvidia 6800. As long as I can run Empire on medium or somewhere between medium and high, I'd be happy.