virtual memory question

[Gunner{MEOW}]

what size should my virtual memory be at right now its at intial size mb1536 maximum mb3072 can someone help me out on this

[Smooth*{MEOW}*]

How much RAM do you have Gunner?  Nowadays with people using large amounts of memory it doesn't get used as much.

[Gunner{MEOW}]

2 gigs of ram

[Raidien{MEOW}]

just set it to "auto configure" and it will use it as it needs it.

[Smooth*{MEOW}*]

You can monitor it's usage by hitting ctrl-alt-del once, then the performance tab, and look at page file usage history.

[INSTINCT]

virtual memory is still a very important part of windows xp, not untill vista comes out will we see if anything has changed on this.

untill then using windows xp you *must* enable virtual memory or some called the page file or swap file== virtual mem, if you think you have enough memory using 2 gigs of ram think again!, battlefield 2 has had a peak memory throughput of 1.6gigs !!! now if u have 2gigs this means your pc is definatly accessing the swap file to move huge amounts of data through the cpu, some of the swap file movements can be massive especially gaming on next gen games,video burning or editing,mp4 or wmv/a-hd,if you are using vivo features or high def tv then swap file usage will be tremendous.

as a general rule it should equal or 2x your total actuall memory amount.

or "allow windows to decide"

setting it manually will garner different results but never drop it below recomended settings remember system restore demands access to the swap file so you dont want to get caught with your pants down.
setting it too low will also introduce a possible volitile windows environment.

*by the way on some of the Ghost recon-advanced warfighter forums it is rumored that GR4 will demand 2gigs of ram for total throughput*


http://computer.howstuffworks.com/virtual-memory4.htm

[THEKATZ*{MEOW}*]

Very good Instinct, thank you. 

I have 1gig RAM and use a minimum page file setting of 1024mb and a max of 4096mb.  Using system managed is fine to a point but with exactly what Instinct pointed out, BF2 and other games use huge amounts of information.  Setting a minimum and maximum keeps Windows from having to calculate and expand/contract the swap file.  This is a gamer tweak guys.  Been around for a while.
 

[INSTINCT]

mine is set to 2x my physical amount.

*there is a little tweak you can do to this , set the min and max to the same sum*> ex:   min 2560- max 2560 , this means winxp has to load the entire swap file amount ,instead of fluctuating it ,it has performance enhancing properties when winxp loads the entire swap file.

[THEKATZ*{MEOW}*]