Hi Jojo,

> Does running on vista 32 mean Im notting getting the most
> out of my processor and ram and how will this effect working
> with MOI, should I upgrade to Vista 64 or windows 7 when
> it arrives?

Unless you are going to make very heavily detailed objects, you should be just fine with your current setup.

But if you are going to do something with a heavy amount of detail, then there is a setting that you will need to adjust in Windows in order for MoI to be able to see all your 3 GB of RAM.

The way 32-bit windows is set up by default, for every 32-bit program that is running, there is 2GB of address space set up for the program's use, and 2GB of address space that is reserved for the operating system's use for various hardware interfaces, file buffers, etc...

So with the default setup a regular program like MoI will not have your full 3GB visible to it, it only has 2GB visible to it. However 2GB is a pretty large amount of memory anyway so unless you are doing very heavily detailed stuff it is probably going to be fine just like that.

But there is an option where you can set up Windows so that it gives 3GB to programs and only reserves 1GB for the system. If you were to set that option then it would let MoI use all your 3GB of memory.

On XP this was called the /3GB switch, which you set in the boot.ini file:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791558.aspx

In Vista there is no longer a boot.ini file, instead you use a utility called BCDEdit to set a boot option for it, some details here:
http://blogs.technet.com/brad_rutkowski/archive/2006/10/03/Hey-where-did-_2F00_3GB-go-in-Longhorn-and-Vista_3F00_.aspx


If you do use 64-bit windows instead of 32-bit windows then there is no need to set any switches, 64-bit windows is set up to make a full 4GB of address space available to programs like MoI without needing any special settings.


- Michael