8gb ram, why?? please explain???

[pedalinmedic]

So my new(er) lenovo w510 with windows 7 32 bit has 8gb of ram. Why would lenovo do this since win7 can only use 4gb? Im confused? should I upgrade to 64bit? can someone please explain this to me?

[sarbin]

welcome to the forum.

not sure why they'd configure it as win7-32 + 8gb. re: upgrading to win7-64, it's up to you whether the effort is worth it. depends on what you want to do with the machine and if it would benefit from the whole 8gb. if it were me, i'd do it. all of my production machines are running win7-64. they're all rock stable.

cheers.

[pianowizard]

So my new(er) lenovo w510 with windows 7 32 bit has 8gb of ram. Why would lenovo do this since win7 can only use 4gb?

Are you the original owner of this laptop? Perhaps the laptop originally had 3GB or 4GB RAM with 32bit, and then the previous owner upgraded the RAM but not the OS?

[pedalinmedic]

I am the original owner. Is there an advantage to the larger amount of ram?

[Colonel O'Neill]

Certain usages will see an improvement with the additional RAM.
I think you were supposed to choose 64-bit while configuring the laptop.

In any case, you can try ReadyFor4GB (allows up to 128GB, free, a kernel patch, breaks XP mode), various unmanaged memory managers (usually paid), or a reinstall to 64-bit.

Alternatively, you can install eBoostr (paid), and have it cache your commonly used programs in the extra space, which would make things run super fast.