Maximum amount of ram?

[Kris Kennaway]

On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 04:14:28PM -0500, Reuben A. Popp wrote:
> Good afternoon everyone,
> 
> Can someone please tell me what is the maximum amount of physical ram that the 
> i386 branch of fbsd can handle?  We're looking at purchasing a really beefy 
> machine here and I would like to make sure that it can utilize the amount of 
> ram that will be installed.

The i386 architecture is incapable of addressing more than 4GB at once
(since it's fundamentally 32-bit).  So you have to use a hack called
PAE to allow the kernel to juggle between 4GB subsets of a larger
amount of RAM (up to 64GB on FreeBSD).  See the handbook for
documentation of PAE and its limitations.

If you really need to make efficient use of such a large amount of
RAM, consider purchasing an amd64-compatible system instead.

Kris
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20061113/b9acf564/attachment.pgp