PCI video cards / aperture based addressing - 64 Bit OS's for gaming?

[Ghastly]

Well, Pooh bear!!!!

BaldEagl was right.  No one seems to come right out and announce it as being the case, but from what I can tell based on research of the issue both on of the NVidia forums and across the net in general, with the advent of PCI-E based video cards, aperture based access of video memory seems to have gone the way of the Dodo. 

Which means that your max available RAM under 32 bit OS is going to be (roughly) 4 GB - ~ 500-750 MB - the total video memory on whatever PCI-E video cards you have in the system.  Or in other words, a pair of 8800GTX's with 768 MB each appears likely to limit you to around a max of about 1.75 GB available memory under a 32 bit OS.

I've avoided to this point 64 bit OS's other than on a few work related servers due to compatibility issues and general pain the in the you know whatedness - but what is the current status of 64 bit XP or (shudder) the other one for AH?  What about other games?  I don't play much else, but would hate to be hindered if I chose to if I built a new rig.

<S>!

(edit for typo's and clarification...)

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Well, Pooh bear!!!!

BaldEagl was right.  No one seems to come right out and announce it as being the case, but from what I can tell based on research of the issue both on of the NVidia forums and across the net in general, with the advent of PCI based video cards, aperture based access of video memory seems to have gone the way of the Dodo. 

Which means that your max available RAM under 32 bit OS is going to be (roughly) ~ 500-750 GB - the total video memory on whatever PCI memory cards you have in the system.  Or in other words, a pair of 8800GTX's with 768 GB each appears likely to limit you to around a max of about 1.75 GB available memory under a 32 bit OS.

I've avoided to this point 64 bit OS's other than on a few work related servers due to compatibility issues and general pain the in the you know whatedness - but what is the current status of 64 bit XP or (shudder) the other one for AH?  What about other games?  I don't play much else, but would hate to be hindered if I chose to if I built a new rig.

<S>!

Windows 7 x64 despite being RC stage is by far the best 64-bit gaming platform at the moment. It's based on the same driver model with Vista so it has surprisingly large support already and the performance in gaming is surprisingly good. FPS is a bit lower than in 32-bit XP but on good side the fps is far more stable and it doesn't stutter with sound acceleration like XP does.

[Denholm]

...Which means that your max available RAM under 32 bit OS is going to be (roughly) 4 GB - ~ 500-750 GB - the total video memory on whatever PCI-E video cards you have in the system.  Or in other words, a pair of 8800GTX's with 768 GB each...

I don't want to come across as a heckler. You meant MB, right? The, "GB" made the rest of the text rather confusing.

[Ghastly]

Yeah - I should know better than to type a post like this one in a hurry while trying to move on to something else.  It should be better worded now.

<S>

[Denholm]

Ah, just wanted to make sure.