Negative, Pentium 4 was x86 and thus could only address 32 bits.
64bit CPUs started hitting the mainstream in 2003, but 64bit Windows didn’t take off until Win7 in 2009. (XP had it, but no one bothered switching from 32b XP to 64b XP just to use more memory and have early adoption issues. Vista had it, but no one had Vista).
It’s kind of like how the 8086 was a 16 bit processor but could access 1 megabyte of ram (640k ram 384 k reserved for rom) . -Or the 286 which was 16 bit but could access 24 MB.
But even without that the Prescott P4’s supported 64 bits.
While technically true, the P4 did support PAE, in reality you couldn’t really make use of it on consumer hardware for most of its lifetime. No ordinary socket 478 mainboard with DDR1 memory supported more than 4 GB of RAM. With socket 775 more RAM was possible, but that socket is “only” ~20 years old.
Besides that, there were other even newer systems that supported only 4 GB of RAM, like some Intel Atom mainboards with a single DDR2 socket. Same with Via C3 mainboards.
PAE was introduced with the Pentium Pro 30 years ago. I used it on Dell Pentium II servers that ran SQL Server. Even the 386 from 1985 could access 64 terabytes of ram using segmented mode.
What hardware are you using where the cpu says you are limited to 4gb?
Even a 25 year old Pentium 4 supports 8GB.
Might be using a laptop where the RAM is soldered to the board. I’ve got a Thinkpad X280 that’s like that: no slots, just surface-mounted RAM.
That’s Lenovo’s fault, not Intel.
Oh wow, I just saw the comment about it being an ancient Atom. Yeah, fair enough!
Maybe an Atom?
Yep. Intel atom D525
Have you looked into using zram?
Maybe. But it would need to be an Atom from 15 years ago. Anything newer does 32 GB.
Of course motherboards don’t support it but that’s not the cpu’s fault.
8GB can be stuffy on certain programs
My guess is an x86 32bit machine
Negative, Pentium 4 was x86 and thus could only address 32 bits.
64bit CPUs started hitting the mainstream in 2003, but 64bit Windows didn’t take off until Win7 in 2009. (XP had it, but no one bothered switching from 32b XP to 64b XP just to use more memory and have early adoption issues. Vista had it, but no one had Vista).
The Pentium 4 supported PAE and 36 bit PSE
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension#:~:text=This article needs additional citations,may be challenged and removed.&text=In computing%2C Physical Address Extension,the operating system enables PAE.
It’s kind of like how the 8086 was a 16 bit processor but could access 1 megabyte of ram (640k ram 384 k reserved for rom) . -Or the 286 which was 16 bit but could access 24 MB.
But even without that the Prescott P4’s supported 64 bits.
While technically true, the P4 did support PAE, in reality you couldn’t really make use of it on consumer hardware for most of its lifetime. No ordinary socket 478 mainboard with DDR1 memory supported more than 4 GB of RAM. With socket 775 more RAM was possible, but that socket is “only” ~20 years old.
Besides that, there were other even newer systems that supported only 4 GB of RAM, like some Intel Atom mainboards with a single DDR2 socket. Same with Via C3 mainboards.
Oh sure. But as I said, that’s the motherboard’s fault, not the cpu.
All of that was introduced in 2004. When you said “25 years ago” I assumed you meant the original P4 from 2000.
PAE was introduced with the Pentium Pro 30 years ago. I used it on Dell Pentium II servers that ran SQL Server. Even the 386 from 1985 could access 64 terabytes of ram using segmented mode.
Full 64 bit Prescott P4 was 2004.