SC4 Platform Survey

[z1 566]

As the NAM evolves, the NAM Team wants to make sure that it supports its users (and potential users) as best as possible.  Toward this end, this poll is designed to give us an idea of the environments in which the user community in general plays SC4.  Responses from as many people as possible are appreciated, even if you have no intention of using the NAM.

 

In the section on OSes, if you're running on a virtual machine, select the OS of that virtual machine.  Similarly, if you're running SC4 under Wine, select the version of Windows to which you have Wine set.

 

If you are using an unusual configuration that causes interesting effects (positive or negative) when playing SC4, please feel free to post them here.  Note, however, that this is not a bug report thread.  Thanks for your help!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Poll is no good.  I run on Linux under wine. 

 

WINdows Executive is neither a virtual machine, nor an emulator.  It is more like a JIT run-time compiler for converting Windows calls to native.

 

I am sure I am not the only one.  Your poll should be expanded to include Linux or at least Other.

 

A nod towards OS/X is fine, but your poll also needs to specify whether users of Apple use the Aspyr version or run the Windows version (under control of an emulator, virtual machine or wine).

 

All windows executables can be run under wine if you are willing to make the effort to select the appropriate run-time versions of the Windows libraries.  There is a utility for that called winetricks.

[Haljackey 17,303]

SC4 runs beautifully on my PC. When I bought this PC in 2010, I specifically told the guy who was building it for me that I wanted it to run SC4 as well as possible.

 

My specs:

-120GB SSD

-2TB HDD

-12GB RAM

-GTX 470 GPU

-i7 950 CPU

-1920x1080 Primary

-1920x1200 Secondary

-700W Power Supply

-X85 Motherboard

 

I run SC4 on the SSD in windowed (fullscreen) mode, 1920x1080, with the 4GB patch.

 

I thought about SLI-ing another GTX 470 when SC13 came out, but it turns out it wasn't even close to being needed

[JWL 52]

Everything runs great with NAM 31.1 w/ Extreme Simulator.

 

Specs:

• Win 7 Pro
• GTX 470 GPU 1.280GB vRAM
• 12 GB G.SKILL RAM
• Acer 3D-Gaming Monitor, 1920x1080@120 native
• i7-960 @ 3.2GHz
• x58A-UD3R rv.2 Motherboard

[His Divine Hand 244]

A complaint about your poll:  you must answer all poll questions, but question two, If you run Windows XP or earlier, doesn't have an option relevant to a Mac user.  

 

Poll is no good.  I run on Linux under wine. 

 

WINdows Executive is neither a virtual machine, nor an emulator.  It is more like a JIT run-time compiler for converting Windows calls to native.

 

I am sure I am not the only one.  Your poll should be expanded to include Linux or at least Other.

 

A nod towards OS/X is fine, but your poll also needs to specify whether users of Apple use the Aspyr version or run the Windows version (under control of an emulator, virtual machine or wine).

 

All windows executables can be run under wine if you are willing to make the effort to select the appropriate run-time versions of the Windows libraries.  There is a utility for that called winetricks.

You should have read Z1's OP before posting:

 

In the section on OSes, if you're running on a virtual machine, select the OS of that virtual machine.  Similarly, if you're running SC4 under Wine, select the version of Windows to which you have Wine set.

 

 

[mongobcsd 4]

Dell XPS 410,Windows XP Media Edition.Specs are just factory with just an upgrade in RAM and an Nvidea 9500GT. Nothing to pretty. And the new NAM runs great. Settings for the game are set at the highest.....except for the number of cars,they annoy me.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I can set wine to run all the way from Windows 2 through Windows 8.  I am afraid I don't see much point in this poll.  However, for formality I will run it.

 

However, bear in mind that no program has all the memory in a multi-tasking operating system.  The days of programmers thinking they are alone in a machine have been over since the introduction of XP, or even earlier.  With multiple cores, something will usually be running, even if it is only a brief swap in to update the time of day.  In my system there are over 100 tasks sitting in time- or I/O-waits all the time.

 

You can't count on getting all the available memory at any time.

[Turjan 1,048]

However, bear in mind that no program has all the memory in a multi-tasking operating system.

 

Didn't SC4 have something like a 3GB limit, anyway?

[macscfan 117]

I'm running the Windows version of SC4 under Windows 7 in a virtual machine (VMWare Fusion) under Mac OS X 10.8.3 and it runs at full speed.  I'll check everything out tonight or tomorrow and make sure it runs okay.

[z1 566]

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who has participated in this survey, and I would like to encourage others to participate as well.  The results are very helpful in letting the NAM Team know the configurations of hardware and software that it needs to support.

 

Poll is no good.  I run on Linux under wine.

 

As His Divine Hand pointed out, I did take Wine into account where I said, "Similarly, if you're running SC4 under Wine, select the version of Windows to which you have Wine set."  Now I've done some research on Wine, but I've never used it, so I have a question for you.  I understand that although Wine is a 32-bit program, it can look like a 64-bit version of Windows to Windows programs.  And although the default for Wine is to appear as 32-bit Windows XP, is there any disadvantage in having it appear as 64-bit Windows Vista or later to SC4?  And is this a global setting for Wine, or can it be made per program?  The reason I ask is that the 4GB patch will work fine with Wine if it appears as 64-bit Windows Vista or later, but if it appears as a 32-bit OS, there is no way of expanding SC4's address space beyond 2 GB.  (There is such a way in Windows, but this requires manipulation of Windows' boot files, which do not appear to have a corresponding version in Wine.)

 

I am sure I am not the only one.  Your poll should be expanded to include Linux or at least Other.

 

The reason it doesn't have these choices is that there is no Linux version of SC4; what's important to us is what OS SC4 thinks it's running under.

 

A nod towards OS/X is fine, but your poll also needs to specify whether users of Apple use the Aspyr version or run the Windows version (under control of an emulator, virtual machine or wine).

 

I tried to address your point in my original post by saying, "In the section on OSes, if you're running on a virtual machine, select the OS of that virtual machine."

 

A complaint about your poll:  you must answer all poll questions, but question two, If you run Windows XP or earlier, doesn't have an option relevant to a Mac user.

 

You are correct; the last choice should read, "I run Mac OS X, or Windows Vista or later".  Unfortunately, it is not possible to edit the poll at this point.

 

However, bear in mind that no program has all the memory in a multi-tasking operating system.  The days of programmers thinking they are alone in a machine have been over since the introduction of XP, or even earlier.  With multiple cores, something will usually be running, even if it is only a brief swap in to update the time of day.  In my system there are over 100 tasks sitting in time- or I/O-waits all the time.

 

You can't count on getting all the available memory at any time.

 

This is one reason I asked how much physical memory people have, as this has a big effect on performance.  But as far as how much memory a process can allocate, this is independent of the amount of physical memory.  For example, on a standard, unpatched Windows system, all 32 bit processes can access up to 2 GB of memory.  If a lot of other programs are running, a process may have to wait a while to get access to its memory, but the actual allocation will always succeed up to the 2 GB limit.

 

Didn't SC4 have something like a 3GB limit, anyway?

 

No; SC4, like all 32-bit process, has a 2 GB limit on a standard machine.  However, running under 32-bit Windows, starting with Windows 2000, there are ways to increase this amount to 3 GB, with the remaining 1 GB of address space reserved for the kernel.  Unlike the 4 GB patch, though, the change to enable 3 GB affects all processes running on that copy of Windows.  The NAM installer is being modified to give users the option of using 3 GB per process on these versions of Windows; this will improve the stability of the NAM, and allow users to run with more NAM options enabled.

[longtimepcgamer 227]

What is this "4 gig patch" that has been mentioned a few times in this thread?

 

Kev

[z1 566]

What is this "4 gig patch" that has been mentioned a few times in this thread?

 

Please see the first bullet item in the NAM 31.1 announcement.

[Metalpuritan 160]

Intel i5 2500k

GeForce GTX 460 SE 1gig DDR(3, 4 or 5 i forget which one)

corsair power supply 650watt (irrelevant)

Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 motherboard (irrelevant)

8 gig Corsair DDR 4(I think it is 4 it could be 3 for this game it is irrelevant) RAM

Win7

 

More relevant than all of that, I have DirectX9 installed, I DatPack my plugins folder(properly) and am running the 4GB patch allowing for a larger amount of RAM to be available for use by my game and lastly, I edit my command line(either manually or using a launcher, I prefer the launcher, it is so much easier.)

 

My system is serious overkill for this game and really the majority of games that are out there at this moment.  The only time my PC has ever seen any heavy usage in either my RAM and/or my CPU is when I run 6 clients at once of this game called Perfect World International, that is the only time I have ever seen my computer break a sweat.  All other games I have EVER played never tax my system.  I see a whole lot of wasted money on "high end" PCs these days for what reason I have no clue, some E-peen thing I think.

 

You could run this game on just Intel core 2 duo quad, 4 gig RAM and a GeForce GTX 280 and would not even see a difference between that set-up and my set-up and then at that, that would still be overkill too.

 

 

Personally for the purpose I assume you are doing this poll for, I would find the lowest end computer and aim for that, make your plugin work on the lowest end PC possible that way you can reach the biggest audience possible, make it compatible with higher end PCs, just make sure that it works on the lower end first.  You cannot cater to your super computer crowd, that is but a small fraction of your audience.  It sounds all super cool to say "hey you have to have a great computer to run our plugins." but in reality you are basically shooting yourself in the foot in doing so.  The lowest common denominator is always the safest bet.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I tend to agree with metalpuritan on the idea that one should shoot for the lowest common denominator.  A lot of people are still running XP with only 2GB (or less).  Only outfits like Microsoft have the luxury of dictating to the user community what hardware is "must have" to run a given program.  I am going to test the 4GB patch, and it might even work.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

4GB patch will not open under wine.

[catty-cb 4,393]

Running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

 

HP Omni 120-2135a All-in-Desktop

Celeron G440 single core (Sandy Bridge)

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD Integrated graphics (DX10.1)

8GB of Memory

SATA Hard Drive

 

Noticeable slower than expected when the new NAM was installed on computer, have since used the 4GB patch and there has been an improvement in the time taken to start game, can't say how much, if it would help I can test how long it takes to start with just the NAM and no patch and again with just the NAM and the patch.

 

-catty

[z1 566]

Personally for the purpose I assume you are doing this poll for, I would find the lowest end computer and aim for that, make your plugin work on the lowest end PC possible....

 

Well, that would be Windows 98.  And although the game will run on Windows 98, and you can even use the NAM's traffic simulator and a few other options, the potential number of SC4 users running the NAM on Windows 98 would seem to be insignificant, regardless of what we do.

 

You cannot cater to your super computer crowd, that is but a small fraction of your audience.

 

Yes, we are aware of this, and in fact, the purpose of this poll is to find out who our audience is, and to support them as best as possible.

 

The lowest common denominator is always the safest bet.

 

Among the people who have responded to this poll, the lowest common denominator is Windows 2000 with less than a gigabyte of memory.  SC4 with the standard complete NAM installation simply won't run in that environment; a complete NAM installation takes about half a gigabyte by itself.  Throw in a basic set of plugins, and the memory required for the game to run is much bigger than the physical memory available.  Generally, if the working set (the actual memory that is in fairly constant use) of all your running programs (including the OS) is no more than your physical memory, the machine is still usable, although it starts to bog down a bit earlier than when that point is reached.  But once the total of your working sets is more than your physical memory, your machine pretty much grinds to a halt, spending most of its time on paging.  (This is technically known as "thrashing".)

 

However, the NAM is not a single monolithic plugin.  The installer lets you choose exactly which options you want in your NAM.  As has been noted, the poll has shown that Windows XP with 2 GB of memory is a fairly common configuration, and the NAM will run rather reasonably on such a configuration.  The poll reinforces what the NAM Team has already noticed, namely that for the NAM to work properly for the vast majority of our users, we need to modularize it more, making sure that only what's absolutely necessary gets loaded for a given selection of options.  As it is, the system requirements for the NAM are the same as for the original SC4 Deluxe, with the singular exception that we (like virtually all custom content) require the EP1 patch to be installed.  However, for optimum performance, a faster CPU and more memory are definitely helpful.  This is especially true on the memory end if you have a huge Plugins folder of many gigabytes.  So for someone who uses everything in the NAM and has a huge Plugins folder, more than 4 GB of physical memory may actually be useful.  Much beyond that makes no difference, however (unless you're running a lot of other programs simultaneously), as the fact that SC4 is a 32-bit program limits its address space to 4 GB.  However, to take advantage of that 4 GB of virtual memory, you need either a Mac or a 64-bit version of Windows; with XP and other 32-bit versions of Windows, you can only have a maximum of 3 GB per process, since one gigabyte needs to be reserved for the kernel.

 

Before anyone says, "This is ridiculously too much memory that you're talking about!", I should point out that the 4GB patch has been extremely effective in eliminating crashes and freezes when using the current NAM.  Since all this patch does is to set a flag in the SC4 executable that expands its address space from 2 GB to 4 GB, the fact that these crashes and freezes were happening for many users and this patch got rid of them can only mean that for these people, a 2 GB address space was not enough for SC4 with the current NAM.  Again, the NAM Team is hard at work reducing the NAM's memory requirements, but it's clear from these observations that people who want to take advantage of the entire suite of features offered by the NAM would do well to have more than 2 GB of memory.  People who are using a fixed set of features in the NAM are not going to have to reduce that set to maintain performance as the NAM continues to develop, and the modularization of the network controller will gradually allow load times to be reduced to what they were in previous versions of the NAM for the same set of options.  (Note that RHW in the current NAM is much expanded from previous versions of the NAM, and therefore unavoidably requires more memory.  There is already some modularization available here in the form of the two controllers offered with the NAM, and it is expected that more modularization will be available with time, so that the RHW will not be an "all or nothing" option.)

 

And finally, there's the 4GB virtual memory limit for all 32-bit processes, which includes SC4.  Once SC4 with the NAM hits that, it's Game Over - literally.  It is simply impossible to increase that limit for a 32-bit process, since that's all the memory that can be addressed with 32 bits.  Fortunately, we have quite a ways to go before we get there.

 

4GB patch will not open under wine.

 

This is very strange; the patch is a standard 32-bit process.  It's as necessary for Wine as it is for Windows, as Wine (like Windows) allocates only 2 GB of virtual memory per 32-bit process by default.  Wine supports the Large Address Aware bit in the executable's header, though, so this patch should work on Wine just as it does on Windows.

 

When you say the patch will not open, what exactly happens when you try to run it?

[Gurning_Chimp 398]

Windows 7 (I think it's 32-bit)

[Metalpuritan 160]

 

Personally for the purpose I assume you are doing this poll for, I would find the lowest end computer and aim for that, make your plugin work on the lowest end PC possible....

 

Well, that would be Windows 98.  And although the game will run on Windows 98, and you can even use the NAM's traffic simulator and a few other options, the potential number of SC4 users running the NAM on Windows 98 would seem to be insignificant, regardless of what we do.

 

You cannot cater to your super computer crowd, that is but a small fraction of your audience.

 

Yes, we are aware of this, and in fact, the purpose of this poll is to find out who our audience is, and to support them as best as possible.

 

The lowest common denominator is always the safest bet.

 

Among the people who have responded to this poll, the lowest common denominator is Windows 2000 with less than a gigabyte of memory.  SC4 with the standard complete NAM installation simply won't run in that environment; a complete NAM installation takes about half a gigabyte by itself.  Throw in a basic set of plugins, and the memory required for the game to run is much bigger than the physical memory available.  Generally, if the working set (the actual memory that is in fairly constant use) of all your running programs (including the OS) is no more than your physical memory, the machine is still usable, although it starts to bog down a bit earlier than when that point is reached.  But once the total of your working sets is more than your physical memory, your machine pretty much grinds to a halt, spending most of its time on paging.  (This is technically known as "thrashing".)

 

However, the NAM is not a single monolithic plugin.  The installer lets you choose exactly which options you want in your NAM.  As has been noted, the poll has shown that Windows XP with 2 GB of memory is a fairly common configuration, and the NAM will run rather reasonably on such a configuration.  The poll reinforces what the NAM Team has already noticed, namely that for the NAM to work properly for the vast majority of our users, we need to modularize it more, making sure that only what's absolutely necessary gets loaded for a given selection of options.  As it is, the system requirements for the NAM are the same as for the original SC4 Deluxe, with the singular exception that we (like virtually all custom content) require the EP1 patch to be installed.  However, for optimum performance, a faster CPU and more memory are definitely helpful.  This is especially true on the memory end if you have a huge Plugins folder of many gigabytes.  So for someone who uses everything in the NAM and has a huge Plugins folder, more than 4 GB of physical memory may actually be useful.  Much beyond that makes no difference, however (unless you're running a lot of other programs simultaneously), as the fact that SC4 is a 32-bit program limits its address space to 4 GB.  However, to take advantage of that 4 GB of virtual memory, you need either a Mac or a 64-bit version of Windows; with XP and other 32-bit versions of Windows, you can only have a maximum of 3 GB per process, since one gigabyte needs to be reserved for the kernel.

 

Before anyone says, "This is ridiculously too much memory that you're talking about!", I should point out that the 4GB patch has been extremely effective in eliminating crashes and freezes when using the current NAM.  Since all this patch does is to set a flag in the SC4 executable that expands its address space from 2 GB to 4 GB, the fact that these crashes and freezes were happening for many users and this patch got rid of them can only mean that for these people, a 2 GB address space was not enough for SC4 with the current NAM.  Again, the NAM Team is hard at work reducing the NAM's memory requirements, but it's clear from these observations that people who want to take advantage of the entire suite of features offered by the NAM would do well to have more than 2 GB of memory.  People who are using a fixed set of features in the NAM are not going to have to reduce that set to maintain performance as the NAM continues to develop, and the modularization of the network controller will gradually allow load times to be reduced to what they were in previous versions of the NAM for the same set of options.  (Note that RHW in the current NAM is much expanded from previous versions of the NAM, and therefore unavoidably requires more memory.  There is already some modularization available here in the form of the two controllers offered with the NAM, and it is expected that more modularization will be available with time, so that the RHW will not be an "all or nothing" option.)

 

And finally, there's the 4GB virtual memory limit for all 32-bit processes, which includes SC4.  Once SC4 with the NAM hits that, it's Game Over - literally.  It is simply impossible to increase that limit for a 32-bit process, since that's all the memory that can be addressed with 32 bits.  Fortunately, we have quite a ways to go before we get there.

 

4GB patch will not open under wine.

 

This is very strange; the patch is a standard 32-bit process.  It's as necessary for Wine as it is for Windows, as Wine (like Windows) allocates only 2 GB of virtual memory per 32-bit process by default.  Wine supports the Large Address Aware bit in the executable's header, though, so this patch should work on Wine just as it does on Windows.

 

When you say the patch will not open, what exactly happens when you try to run it?

 

I see how you stated that Windows 2000 with only 1 gig was the lowest, but that is NOT the lowest common denominator.  The lowest COMMON denominator would be windows XP with 4 gig.  The sole user of Windows 2000 and 1 gig would be considered an anomaly.  One might even think that these are false votes in your poll.  Even that dell refurbished ancient piece of crap PC that is sold in most computer hardware stores is better than that.  This thing:  http://www.used-pcs.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=41594&idcategory=8.

 

 

com·mon de·nom·i·na·tor  

Noun

1. A shared multiple of the denominators of several fractions.
2. A feature shared by all members of a group.

 

 

 

[Turjan 1,048]

Before anyone says, "This is ridiculously too much memory that you're talking about!", I should point out that the 4GB patch has been extremely effective in eliminating crashes and freezes when using the current NAM.  Since all this patch does is to set a flag in the SC4 executable that expands its address space from 2 GB to 4 GB, the fact that these crashes and freezes were happening for many users and this patch got rid of them can only mean that for these people, a 2 GB address space was not enough for SC4 with the current NAM.

 

The problem isn't even specific for the current NAM. I'm still running NAM 30, and I need the 4GB patch to eliminate crashes during saving my large cities. Which it does remarkably well.

 

It would probably be interesting to see whether my crashes come back if I install NAM 31.1 now.

[His Divine Hand 244]

I see how you stated that Windows 2000 with only 1 gig was the lowest, but that is NOT the lowest common denominator.  The lowest COMMON denominator would be windows XP with 4 gig.  The sole user of Windows 2000 and 1 gig would be considered an anomaly.  One might even think that these are false votes in your poll.  Even that dell refurbished ancient piece of crap PC that is sold in most computer hardware stores is better than that.  This thing:  http://www.used-pcs.com/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=41594&idcategory=8.

 

 

That less than a gig of ram is me, the Mac user.  It is infact, only 512 mb that my sevenish year old computer has.  I have not upgraded to NAM 31.1 yet, still using 30, so I cannot say whether my computer can take it.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

We Linux and MAC users have an unfair advantage.  We don't have that huge Windows kernel cluttering up our memory.  Maybe this is why we can run in smaller systems than some.

[z1 566]

The lowest COMMON denominator would be windows XP with 4 gig.  The sole user of Windows 2000 and 1 gig would be considered an anomaly.

 

It's certainly possible that that one user of Windows 2000 with 1GB is an anomaly; it's certainly not statistically significant, and more votes would be needed to decide on its validity.  However, even if you toss that out, that leaves a lot of users with Windows XP and 2 GB of memory.  If you look closely at the figures, I think you'll find that that's your lowest common denominator.

 

The main point here is that whether or not that lone Windows 2000 user is an anomaly, there certainly aren't a lot of them, and the NAM Team isn't going to spend a lot of energy supporting such a configuration, although the core NAM features should still work there.  But Windows XP with 2GB of memory represents a large enough fraction of our users that we do need to pay attention to this configuration.  By doing so, we will automatically support somewhat lesser configurations; for example, from the NAM's point of view, there really isn't much difference between Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

 

We Linux and MAC users have an unfair advantage.  We don't have that huge Windows kernel cluttering up our memory.  Maybe this is why we can run in smaller systems than some.

 

As a former Unix user, I can vouch for the truth of that.

[Shortsonfire 67]

I voted my Mac's specs, since it was my primary gaming comp. Aspyr version.

I recently started playing on my pc, and may switch to making that my primary sc4 comp.

Since I couldn't multi vote, I'll throw this here too.

Windows 7

Yes NAM 31.1

16 gb ram

[akbear 3]

whether this skews the results or not, I voted above 3 and below 4 for memory as I went with the 3.62 GB or RAM listed on my stats rather than 4 GB of actual chips in the machine

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

whether this skews the results or not, I voted above 3 and below 4 for memory as I went with the 3.62 GB or RAM listed on my stats rather than 4 GB of actual chips in the machine

As did I. 

 

My GPU swipes half a gig, and the system actually allocates that a boot time.  It is a BIOS set up parameter. 

 

I suppose if I had a GPU with its own RAM, I could get this back.  One of the cheap-side tricks of computer manufacturers is to use a GPU with no memory of its own and swipe a chunk of your general RAM.  When I first got this box it had only 2GB which I upped to 4GB.

[z1 566]

whether this skews the results or not, I voted above 3 and below 4 for memory as I went with the 3.62 GB or RAM listed on my stats rather than 4 GB of actual chips in the machine

 

I am afraid it does skew the results.  We're interested in the amount of physical memory here; we know that not all of that is usable by user processes.  If people who voted as you did could revote specifying their amount of physical memory, that would be helpful.  Thanks!

[akbear 3]

 

As did I. 

 

My GPU swipes half a gig, and the system actually allocates that a boot time.  It is a BIOS set up parameter. 

 

I suppose if I had a GPU with its own RAM, I could get this back.  One of the cheap-side tricks of computer manufacturers is to use a GPU with no memory of its own and swipe a chunk of your general RAM.  When I first got this box it had only 2GB which I upped to 4GB.

 

 

let's face it, has there truly been a benchmark hardware leap since the 8086?  As far as I'm aware PCs are still locked into 640k of conventional memory and only reach higher through the witchcraft of expanded, upper, higher and extended memory

 

 

whether this skews the results or not, I voted above 3 and below 4 for memory as I went with the 3.62 GB or RAM listed on my stats rather than 4 GB of actual chips in the machine

 

I am afraid it does skew the results.  We're interested in the amount of physical memory here; we know that not all of that is usable by user processes.  If people who voted as you did could revote specifying their amount of physical memory, that would be helpful.  Thanks!

 

 

ok, changed my answers to at least 4 gb and yes at least 4 gb.

[z1 566]

let's face it, has there truly been a benchmark hardware leap since the 8086?  As far as I'm aware PCs are still locked into 640k of conventional memory and only reach higher through the witchcraft of expanded, upper, higher and extended memory.

 

This model, which was designed for 8-bit and 16-bit CPUs, changed with the i286, and the modern model of 32-bit, virtual memory was supported in the i386, more than 25 years ago.  Expanded, upper, higher and extended memory all disappeared in the 1980s.  All 32-bit processes can address 4 GB directly; it's only the OS that restricts them to 2 GB.  And on 64-bit machines, you can address 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes directly, although again, the OS typically puts restrictions on this.  Probably still more than you'll ever need, though...

[akbear 3]

I still say it's witchcraft and virtually nothing has been invented in the past 30-40 years, It's now just repackaging, repurposing, tweaking and combining to re-patent something.  What really new leap of creation or imaginaiton have we seen since the pc and the carphone went mobile?  (and I certainly don't count the seqway as anything monumental)