How much RAM does a 64 bit OS allow for? Maybe a better question, what would you currently need that much RAM for? Regardless of whether it would be beneficial, I still wouldn't mind having it though.

maybe with nehalm and metaram big companys can consolidate all there servers into just a few servers

AjayD:

How much RAM does a 64 bit OS allow for?

Nearly infinite as far as our needs are concerned.  16EB.  That's 16.8 million TB, or 17.2 billion GB.  I have a feeling this will last the rest of the century.  Technology progresses fast, but not that fast, eh? 

Crisis Causer:

Technology progresses fast, but not that fast, eh? 

I don't know man....our 16-bit OSes were often capped out by gamers back in 'da day....now 32-bit is being capped in this day.

15 years ago 4 Megabytes of RAM was a huge amount.. that is .0019% of the amount used in most computers today (referencing 2GB). I honestly do not think that TBs of RAM are THAT far off on the horizon -- give 'er 5 yeras or so and we'll see. Heck in 15 more years from now maybe we'll be up to exabytes, haha.

BTW: To figure out the supported memory just take 2 ^ bits-of-OS -- EX: 2 ^ 32 =  4294967296 bytes (approximately 4GB)

Thanks for answering my question Crisis and ice. 16EB, good lord that's a lot of RAM. Though it may seem like an insane amount right now, eventually it will not be enough and we will have to move on to 128-bit OSs. I look forward to that day. Imagine, if you can, what the graphics of a game would have to be like to need more than 16EB of RAM! The possibilities that the future holds are mind boggling.

Imagine the costs too.Nobody will be able to use or buy all that ram for a single computer.