i understand putting 4gb of ram on xp 32bit results in the pc only seeing like 3 and 1/4 gb. i currently have 4gb ram and a 512mb graphics card and the hardware screen shows the cpu speed and 3.25gb ram. if i put in a 1gb graphics card will this drop?? or does that 3.25gb include the current 512mb on the gpu?? so faster graphics but slower pc in general??
Adding the 1Gb card will remove another 512MB from the total as it needs to address the 512MB extra that the new card has. Don't think you would notice much slowdown though.
If your ram is dual channel, you'll still be seeing that benefit so not necessarily that much of a slowdown. My own rig, when running 32 bit XP, still showed me as having 3.1Gb with a GTX 260 installed, that's on a P5Q Pro mainboard. When I was using my 8800GT 512Mb card it showed 3.25Mb. The same GPU on a P5N-E SLi showed me 3.5Gb, it's also about the hardware register addresses.
