It is both a matter of hardware and software. Hardware motherboard
manufacturers have built in system limits or normally 3-4 gb or less but
this will change somewhat when Microsoft releases its 64 bit version of the
operating system and that is explaned he

Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems is designed for use on
high-performance PCs. This means new customers will be able to extend beyond
the 4-gigabyte physical memory limit of 32-bit computing.

regards

B


"Mr. E. Mann" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I'm planning on putting together an athlon 64 system when I get my tax
return and I'm looking for a good motherboard that will accept 3GB or ram
(or more). I know windows doesn't really allow a program to accessmore
than
2GB of ram, but I hear XP pro can access more with certain setup. Either
way, I use a program that will use all 2GB of ram allowed it, so having
3GB
will allow windows to load all of it's bloat outside of that 2GB program
limit. Does that make any sense?

Ok, my real question... I have found motherboards that claim they alow 3GB
of ram, but I've also read that some will not allow you to actually use
3GB
of ram? If they can't use 3GB of ram, why would they allow you to install
3GB? This makes no sense to me.

What I am looking for is a board that supports the Athlon 64 3400, Sata,
onboard Lan, usb 2.0, Firewire, 6 channel sound, etc. Basically all the
bells and whistles. This whole 3GB thing has me a bit confused.

Thanks for any help. Hope this made sense.