Atom 330 drives only enough pins for 32-bit physical addresses

[Kevin Cozens]

D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> It shipped with WIn7 home premium 64-bit.  So they cannot blame the OS
> (some support folk tried anyway).

> Win7 says 4.0 G of RAM, 3.0 available.  The shared video memory
> accounts for 0.25G on top of that.  So 0.75G is missing.

Only 3 out of 4 is rather low. I have usually seen about 3.5G on a 4G 
machine that only supports 32-bit. The fact the machine came with a 64-bit 
OS has more to do with the internal operation of the CPU. It may have 
64-bit internal registers but that doesn't tell you about its external 
hardware interface capabilities.

This situation reminds me of the days of the 386DX vs. 386SX. They are both 
32-bit processors but the SX used a 16-bit data bus with only 24-bits on 
the address bus. The two chips could still run the same 32-bit OS and programs.

> | As for what Acer advertises, well it does have 4GB ram installed.
> | The fact you can't use it all is a different issue. :)
> 
> I would call it misleading.


Just like in the days of the hard drive wars. You could buy a drive that 
states a capacity of 100GB on the box. You had to check the fine print to 
find out if that is the formatted or unformatted capacity of the drive.

The average computer purchaser won't usually care about these things but 
for those of us who do, we have to remember to task the right questions to 
ensure we get what we want so there are no unexpected surprises later on.
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