Can you install more RAM than your motherboard supports? Let's test!

tronics wrote:

And since there is no RAM slot... why? Not necessary in ARM versions

To increase the RAM? because, for example, I want to build a few Dockers.

Sometimes, after updating the BIOS, you can sometimes run more powerful processes.

>>21023794
If you want a model with memory expansion, choose a model with memory expansion. After all, they are. E.g. TS-364-4G.
You would be right if there was a trend of limiting the expansion possibilities of devices that so far had this possibility. But cheap NAS never did. Home routers didn`t have it, tablets and smartphones don`t have it either. The cheapest nettops and laptops. For 2 reasons: 1. to make them as cheap as possible, 2. because the market for these devices does not require them. So if you can give up some functionality to lower the price, then... you give it up to lower the price. The question is, on what basis did my colleague put forward the thesis that the new equipment will be "devoid of frills such as RAM slots" ...

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I once had an HP WorkStation - a PC designed like a server and had 8 memory slots.
It could work in Dual Channel and Quad Channel mode - the condition was cooled memory and the appropriate type, which was described in the manual. The BIOS update allowed for the use of more memory as the Xeon was upgraded to a higher model.
Win7 64-bit handled it, Win10 Prof too.
In the end it was probably 2xXeon and 64GB RAM (only 8x8GB due to the cost of RAM which exceeded the entire cost of the computer).

As a courtesy, I sold an HP Z800 to a friend - and it had 12 Quad Channel memory banks - in my configuration, all banks were filled with DDR3 4GB memory (48 GB in total) - and both Win7 64 and Win 10 read the whole thing without any problems. And you could install 8GB sticks (and then you would have 96GB RAM)...

And on the other side of the age barricade - I still "use" Toshiba Satellite A105, which has 2 RAM slots accepting 4 GB each, but despite both slots being filled with good memory, the system (currently Win7 64) only sees 2.99 GB. And as I read - it is the fault of the motherboard design, or more precisely, the northbridge configuration, and no BIOS updates will change it. Well...

Well, the fact that having an OS supporting a large amount of memory will not do anything if the board does not address the entire available amount of RAM.

@kotbury because this satellite was still on Core 2 - the memory controller was still in the motherboard chipset. From Nehalem (Intel) and the first K8 (AMD) it is in the processor and the chipset in fact has nothing to say here (the design of the board itself is another matter), another thing is that even here it was sometimes artificially limited (rather Intel) - e.g. recently I dug out an old Dell with what seems to be the 3rd generation of core and 2C/4T processor. It seems that the processor only supported 4GB max (2 SO-DIMM slots, one with a "dummy module"), but the 4-core processor from the same family did not have such a limit. That Intel wanted to specifically block the supported RAM in a smaller system... But Intel is famous for such tricks, its budget designs usually had neutered sets of additional instructions.

Well, it wasn`t necessarily castration to obtain a weaker product.
This is what management of waste that does not meet the requirements of a high-end product looks like.
There was a moment when guides appeared every now and then on how to unlock the number of cores or something else. I even remember that at one point the best albums for mixing were made by ABIT.

Yes, but do you believe that Intel made a mistake where exactly 1 and the same address line did not work and only in 2-core processors? AMD had this waste management - the chip came out super duper ok, so you had a 4-core phenom, some core didn`t work, you had a 2-3 core phenom. The L3 cache didn`t work, so you had an Athlon II X4. L3 and some core didn`t work, so you had Athlon II X2-X3. I don`t know of AMD cutting supported instructions or limiting the supported RAM of lower models in the same series.

I perceive both companies in a specific way.
Intel - pay, pay, pay!
AMD - we will do something cool! Will you buy it?

Maybe it`s because I built the first board on the Am486 DX2-80, where the Intel one cost twice as much.

tronics wrote:

The question is, on what basis did my colleague put forward the thesis that the new equipment will be "devoid of frills such as RAM slots" ...

These are the facts. The rate of demand for increasing RAM is getting slower. Which more or less means that if someone bought a device with 16GB of RAM 10 years ago, it is quite possible that they have not felt the need to add RAM so far, but the device is already in disarray and they decide to buy a new one.
In addition, the unification of memory chips used in smartphones and laptops, e.g. LPDDR5.
Not everyone needs efficient hardware - some choose mobility and convenience (ultraslim) because they connect to the cloud through something like Citrix.

But this is nothing new, because such ultra-thin laptops with permanently built-in memory have already existed. And this is not a trend that is taking its toll now. Smartphones, or electronics in general (including portable consoles, tablets, cameras, media players) have always been built this way. However, when it comes to computers, the share of those with expansion slots is neither decreasing nor their number. A friend once had 5-6 PCI slots, 2 ISA, one AMR, 2 IDE and one AGP. And maybe 2x USB 1.1 in bursts
Now, sometimes a desktop has 2x PCIe 16x and 4x PCIe 1x, plus 2x M.2, 6 SATA and a total of 10 USB ports (including usually no less than 4 USB3.x), and currently the standard is at least 1 USB-C 20Gbps which again opens up a number of possibilities when it comes to accessories connected to it. And yet the 40Gbps standard has already been implemented. So I`m sorry, but I don`t see this "expansion limitation" somehow. From my perspective of several decades in computers, it`s just the opposite, because you can expand them more and more smartly and more conveniently.

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The rate of demand for increasing RAM is getting slower

The main question is - why should it increase dramatically? Nowadays, even in games, more than 16GB RAM is practically unused, but... more than 16GB VRAM - oh, it looks completely different here. And in typical use, the most resource-intensive application (next to any antivirus) is... the web browser. But even here it`s hard to beat 16GB. There are more requirements for non-standard applications (photo or video processing, CAD applications) and for such applications equipment is purchased that is generally available.

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In addition, the unification of memory chips used in smartphones and laptops, e.g. LPDDR5.

What a unification, after all, these (low power) memories are for specific applications - for mobile devices. Ultra-efficient laptops can and should use such memory. But this does not mean that they have to be soldered permanently - see what Dell offers under the name CAMM...

And do you know why?
Because the amount of demand for frames in previous years was artificially driven.
Instead of optimizing the OS, applications and games, behemoths were created (they still are) that consumed RAM in alarming amounts.
Two examples are very simple.

Game - Diablo 3 - the error has not been fixed yet, during intense gameplay the demand can jump by 100% and even after stopping the game (standing in the city) it does not drop until the game is turned off.

Windows 10 / 11 - I observed many times when downloading large amounts of patches (fresh installation, etc.), the demand jumped to 16Mb and when the computer had 32Gb, it increased to 24Gb.

The second reason is the popularity of SSD drives.
In the case of HD drives, the SWAP recording problem was very visible or audible. Well, sometimes something hit you when you listened to the whining of WD or the scratching of Samsung.
The speed of SSD means that almost no one pays attention to SWAP.
Well, there are almost no questions anymore about how much to set, on which disk, etc. And the questions about it were from people who had 16Gb.

tronics wrote:

this is not at all a trend that is taking its toll now

I`m afraid there is. A few years ago, from what I remember, the first one was Surface, but now probably every laptop brand offers thin laptops with non-removable RAM. Therefore, when shopping, you have to be careful not to accidentally find a model without memory slots, unless it doesn`t bother someone because they change their equipment every year.
But nowadays it is no longer obvious that you can expand the RAM, because this has become a feature of the equipment of the past years.

tronics wrote:

Quote:

The rate of demand for increasing RAM is getting slower

The main question is - why should it increase dramatically?

This results from many things, but generally from Moore`s law, which, according to many, has ceased to apply in recent years.
Just compare the offers of new laptops from particular years.
15 years ago, the difference in RAM in an average laptop over 3 years was from 1GB to 2GB. Currently, in 2024, a glance at the store and the most offers are 16 GB. If the old trend continued, it would be 64 GB.
And if 16 GB was enough for the average customer for several years, why install slots if he won`t expand the RAM anyway?

And this is what it looks like in a store with a large selection:


So there are practically as many of those above and below as 16Gb.

And it`s not about the possibility of expansion, but it is more economical to do it universally and, depending on the demand, we sell the same equipment with a different number of frames. By adding or subtracting.

acctr wrote:

This results from many things, but generally from Moore`s law, which, according to many, has ceased to apply in recent years.

No, it doesn`t. Same as non-volatile memory capacity. Consumer computers have processors with up to 16 cores and 32 threads. That`s all you CAN have. What does typical home equipment look like? 6C12T? 8C16T? Exactly. Because you don`t have to. Baaah, usually these additional 8 cores won`t change much. Just like 64GB RAM, which can be purchased relatively cheaply, won`t change much. Relative to the current national average, it is cheaper than the 512MB RAM when XP was introduced, and it does not provide even a fraction of the improvement that 512MB RAM gave in XP. So why go through with it? Because you can? Because Moore? Oh no!

acctr wrote:

Therefore, when shopping, you have to be careful not to accidentally find a model without memory slots,

The specification is available and must be. Nobody "accidentally" buys a bad laptop. He must be careless and must make a mistake. Another thing is that for about a decade, 16GB RAM has been a reasonable amount and usually sufficient for trouble-free use of a computer. In the case of ultra-thin laptops that are neither super efficient in terms of CPU nor GPU, I don`t think that an OS and applications will suddenly appear that will make it more necessary. Especially in the era of web applications such as Google Docs, where server performance and connection parameters are the most important.
If, instead of RAM, you check the disk capacity over these 15 years, you will also notice that it has stopped around 1TB. Only it used to be 1TB HDD 2.5``, and now it is 100x faster* NVMe on M.2 PCIE4.0 giving a completely different comfort of use. And data is... uploaded to the cloud, movies are watched via vodka, music is listened to via Spotify. You don`t have to have huge local warehouses like before. And that`s why there is some flattening here too. And it is also completely justified. And this is not a conspiracy to prevent you from expanding your computer.

Gentlemen, I have been using the Intel I7-3790K with DDR3 1600 RAM from Geil for I don`t know how long - only 8 GB - and with Cyberpunk and the last Tomba (the one with the 4K resolution) - all in ultra settings - I have not noticed any major slowdowns -
except that the card is a 16GB Radeon RX6800.
So you don`t need Intel 12xxx or 32 GB RAM for everything to work properly.

But budget laptops (e.g. those for teachers or schools) with Intel I5 M even with 16 GB RAM and SSD - on Win11 and fancy websites on Chrome, they already start to slow down and the system startup takes longer than the SSD law stipulates...

PS. Previously, we wrote about professional equipment such as HP stations. But this equipment was (and is) niche. 12 or 18 physical cores of two processors (with hyperthreading 24 or 36 threads) and over 48 GB of RAM would not bring anything in the most demanding games - especially since the reasonably priced devices are old and have quite poor overall clock speeds. But when you run 3DStudio MAX with multithreading support, you can see the work.

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If, instead of RAM, you check the disk capacity over these 15 years, you will also notice that it has stopped around 1TB. Only it used to be 1TB HDD 2.5``, and now it is 100x faster* NVMe on M.2 PCIE4.0 giving a completely different comfort of use. And data is... uploaded to the cloud, movies are watched via vodka, music is listened to via Spotify. You don`t have to have huge local warehouses like before.

Eeetam. In fact, they didn`t have movies indefinitely, but the cloud won`t solve everything - if you don`t care, and the owner (if there is no EPM impulse) will at least have the books. Some 4 TB stored on separate 2-4 disk drives will never hurt.

If you play in 1080p you don`t need it, turn it on in 4k and you will be surprised.

@ledo99 - no, it is not derived and yes, it addresses 2^23 16-bit words, UDS/LDS only serves to select the interesting piece on the data bus. When operating on words and long words, these signals will always be both active. However, 16-bit memory cells are always addressed.
As for FC, these are outputs that, in theory, would allow the memory areas to be divided into 16MB of user code, 16MB of user data, 16MB of supervisor code and 16MB of supervisor data, but strangely enough, practically no computer has implemented it this way. MMU is not intended to bypass restrictions, but to increase memory control (i.e. add restrictions...)

A long time ago, about 20 years ago, in the times of XP, I had an application that was supposed to work 24/7 (RFID access control in a large company), but it was poorly written and over time it took up more and more RAM. She attributed it to herself, but didn`t slow down and took another piece. After some time, the computer crashed due to lack of memory.
Then I found some program that ran in the background and freed up unused memory. It worked great and I never had to restart my computer due to lack of RAM. But unfortunately I don`t remember what this miracle was called. You could display statistics, and I often saw amounts of free RAM that were absurd for those times. Thick tens of GB.
And what modern application can take up 20+ GB?

CATIA opening a complex model... Like most CAD. Adobe Lightroom can also jerk. But I wrote about it earlier and these are specific applications and not what is usually run on a home computer.

zgierzman wrote:

And what modern application can take up 20+ GB?

Usually some programs for editing videos, etc.

zgierzman wrote:

And what modern application can take up 20+ GB?

Internet browser.

speedy9 wrote:

Dale65 wrote:

Nforce4, AM2 platform without plus and Athlon 64 x2 5600 processor. There are four slots, the manual states a maximum of 4GB, this is currently installed. I want to install Windows 10 on it

Are you kidding? Here, RAM is not the problem, but component compatibility. Windows 10 the oldest that supports FXy. The latest drivers for nForce2 are for Windows 7.

nForce4. I`m completely serious. There are even 64-bit versions on the driver CD, so why not. The processor supports CX16, LAHF/SAHF, PrefetchW. And if 10 can`t handle it even in the 32-bit version, 7 will land here and it will also be git.

>>21021236
I can compare this processor with the laptop version of the T7800, which had 8GB. That`s why I think you can go ahead and add additional memory.

Who said that 10 will not work on this hardware? Everything works fine, I regret that I did not install the 64-bit right away, because all drivers for nForce4 are available for both 32 and 64. Drivers from XP 32-bit swallowed like a pelican, only for the graphics card (Geforce 7300GT) I had to install from Windows Vista/7/8, because the old version under XP admittedly installed but did not work.

Let it not be that unrelated to the topic, why 10 32-bit also sees only 3.25GB of RAM? Installed four dice of 1GB each. The bios certainly doesn't reserve anything because there is no integrated graphics card, only the sound card. The only thing that actually affects the size of memory seen by the system (both XP and 10) is the "Auto Optimize Bottom I/O" option in the BIOS. It takes a hexadecimal value from 00 to FF, defaults to C0 and there is only 3GB of RAM in the system. If I enter D0 it sees 3.25GB, but I don't play around further because I once did experiments and ended up resetting the Bios with a jumper .

Sometimes new softwares and OS's run on old hardware, the question is whether the CPU and OS has all the functions implemented to run at full steam?
How long ago did MMX start and then other functions built into the CPU could be emulated programmatically, but at the expense of performance and resource consumption.

The Athlon 64 X2 on the Windsor kernel (an older one, later there was a version on Brisbane) theoretically supports all those features that 10 requires. Of course, the computer muddles just like on XP, but at least the new programs work. Oh, the only thing that doesn't work is the transparency of windows and the bottom bar, but that's probably a graphics driver issue for an aged card for which no driver has been released for 10.