Is Visio 2003 compiled to take advantage of the /3 GB switch?

K

Kris Prieb

Hi,

My visio file (60 Mb) runs very slowly on my windows xp (32-bit) machine (P4
2.8 GHZ, 3 Gig Ram). Edits and saves take minutes, if not 10's of minutes.
Task manager shows that CPU is maxed out during these delays and memory usage
always hovers around the 1.5-1.9 gig range.

I am considering purchase of a 64-bit machine with 4+ gig of ram running
windows xp professional x64 to see if machine responsiveness while handling
this file can be improved. I was prompted by reading the following on the
microsoft windows xp x64 site:

"Virtual Memory Space in 32-bit Windows

Windows XP Professional, like all 32-bit versions of Windows, is limited to
a total of 4 GB of virtual memory address space. This 4 GB is divided into 2
GB for user processes and 2 GB shared by all processes for the operating
system. In special circumstances, the user virtual address space can be
expanded to 3 GB by forcing all the system processes to fit within 1 GB using
the /3GB boot time switch, but this only affects programs that are
specifically compiled to take advantage of the additional address space. And
all programs will be constrained by the limited memory available to the
operating system."

"Applications running in the WOW64 system on Windows XP Professional x64
Edition each have a full 4 GB of virtual memory space. Applications compiled
to take advantage of the /3 GB switch will actually get 4 GB, without
constraining the operating system at all, since it is running in the 8
terabytes of virtual address space that Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
has for the system processes. This can have a substantial impact on
memory-constrained applications, such as computer-aided design (CAD) and
computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), even before a 64-bit version of the
program is available."

My questions is whether this has a possibility of working, or if Visio 2003
professional simply cannot use more than 2 gig of memory. In short "Is Visio
compiled to take advantage of the /3 GB switch?"

Thanks very much in advance!

-Kris Prieb
 

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