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bassrocker521

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 5, 2008
17
0
I'm going to be buying the new 13" macbook (2.4 ghz) this may, and I would like to buy a version of Windows XP to run on Boot Camp. I'm going to upgrade the RAM to 4gb, but I've heard that Boot Camp doesn't support 64-bit OS's and 32-bits only recognize 3.2 GB of physical memory...so should i just stick to 2GB's of RAM? Or is there another solution?
 
Win32 only "sees" around 3.3 GB of RAM, but on some machines - like my Mac Pro - it even only sees 2 GB RAM. This depends on the chipset of the computer and what-else-not.

Furthermore, there is a limit to the virtual memory that a 32-Bit application can use - which is 2 GB per application.

You shouldn't stick with 2 GB and, in my opinion, you also should no longer use a 32-Bit version of Windows unless you have a very compelling reason to do so (like an application that is incompatible with Vista 64).

You should get yourself a copy of Vista and install the 64-Bit version on your notebook. In case your notebook does not come with a 64-Bit compatible version of Boot Camp, download the 64-Bit driver disc for the Mac Pro from a Torrent. (I've done this for my officially unsupported Mac Pro and it works great!)

Most of the drivers come with Vista already anyway. You'll need the Boot Camp drivers for the "fancy" Apple stuff like the backlit keyboard, the iSight camera and Apple's proprietary BlueTooth chip. Almost everything else works out of the (Vista-)box or with drivers from nVidia or ATI.
 
Why not use VMware Fusion or Parallels - that way you can allocate a GB of ram for windows and carry on using OS X.
That's what i have done and it works very well, unless you really need Windows in bootcamp.
 
vista 64

vista 64 drivers are on the disk for an al macbook. you just have to install each driver individually but it will work i have done it. xp 64 you can get it to work but it is a lot of searching the internet to find drivers.
with 32 bit on an al macbook it will see less than 3 gb it is like 2.75 if i remember correctly. vista 32 bit sp1 will see 4gb but will only use the 2.75 they changed the way windows registers ram it now shows what is installed not what is actually usable.
 
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