What does the 4GB patch do?

[MaiYass]

So I've been modding my Bethesda games for almost a year now, and I recently found out about this 4 GB patch and how it's a "must have for Fallout NV", however I'm not exactly sure what it does. So what specifically does it do?

[Glennard]

it makes it more stable

[psychotron666]

The base game only utilizes 2gb of ram even if you have more. The 4gb loader makes it so the game uses 4gb instead of 2gb (if you have it which you likely do).

[𝕊𝕋𝕌ℝ𝕄-𝕂𝔸𝕋]

This has some info on 4gb patch :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plWow9dGI70

[Incunabulum]

Originally posted by Arm-Fall-Off-Boy:

So I've been modding my Bethesda games for almost a year now, and I recently found out about this 4 GB patch and how it's a "must have for Fallout NV", however I'm not exactly sure what it does. So what specifically does it do?

Set the Large Address Aware flag to allow the game to use the full 4GB or RAM that 32 bit applications are limited to.

Without that set, 32 bit apps are limited to 2GB of RAM usage - this is because waaaay back in the not-so-old-days, 4GB of RAM was the standard for 32 bit OS' and if your apps used it all then you'd continually be hitting out-of-memory errors - because your OS and other apps are still using RAM too.

[Akasaki]

To put it simple, many mods and performance issue need more resource to work better and more stable, and 4gb will make your game eat more proper food to carry itself and mods.