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If I use vmware workstation v6.5 on a vista 32-bit host with 8GB memory, will a 64-bit guest OS (win7) be able to use more than 4GB physical memory (depending on vmware memory settings)?

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This thread has 2 completely contradictory answers on this: communities.vmware.com/message/… – P a u l Jul 30 '09 at 6:02
Probably that person, who gave contradictory answer, thought that he has 64-bit OS as a host. Or just took a wild guess, without trying it himself :] – Slink84 Jul 30 '09 at 6:18
refer also: communities.vmware.com/thread/219571 – hyperslug Jul 30 '09 at 9:04
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Someone already tried that (besides the one that you have found), and it appears that it is not possible.

If you will install 64-bit OS as host, then it will work. But VMWare can't use more RAM than the amount host OS can provide.

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+1 All virtual machine software is limited by the amount of memory that can be physcally addressed. – Diago Jul 30 '09 at 7:00
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No, because it is the host OS which allocates memory for the guest (the 32-bit virtualization program). No 32-bit program will be able to access over 4GB of memory with a 32-bit address space.

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+1 and you can create a 64-bit guest with more than 4GB, but anything over that will be paging and not actually addressing any physical RAM beyond 4GB. – hyperslug Jul 30 '09 at 6:51
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