Tell me more ×
Server Fault is a question and answer site for professional system and network administrators. It's 100% free, no registration required.

It's been a standard feature in Intel/AMD cpus since 1995.

share|improve this question
Are you actually having a specific problem with the lack of PAE on some fairly ancient CPUs? From the FAQ, "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face." – Shane Madden Oct 7 '12 at 5:13
1  
Ancient, laptop cpus, many of which couldn't hold 4gb of ram anyway. Its off topic for SF, and not one that can be answered, unless you were the chap making decisions on market segmentation for intel – Journeyman Geek Oct 7 '12 at 6:20

closed as too localized by Shane Madden, Iain Oct 7 '12 at 6:57

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

It's off topic and will be closed but I will answer you no matter what: because there were no laptops, absolutely none, back then that could've used more than 4GB. The first Pentium M platform using the 855 chipset was using DDR1 RAM. The largest capacity of DDR SO-DIMM (at least widely marketed) was 1GB. Even a portable workstation has only 4 slots. So why bother?

Edit: To quote Wikipedia:

Revisions of the Dothan core were released in the first quarter of 2005 with the Sonoma chipsets and supported a 533 MT/s FSB and XD (Intel's name for the NX bit) (and PAE support required for it was enabled, unlike earlier Pentium Ms that had it disabled).

And, indeed, Sonoma (mobile 915) used DDR2 which had larger capacity modules later, even 4GB ones.

share|improve this answer
Answering Off Topic questions implicitly encourages them and now, as you've answered the automagic cleaning fairies won't be able to do their job either. – Iain Oct 7 '12 at 6:59

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.