Virtually Impossible!

[Sockratease]

OK, I finally found somebody willing to trade me a Gigabyte of RAM for some Old Comic Books!  (I just Loves Old Comic Books!)

So I was thinking this would solve my Virtual Memory Problems (I often get messages that I am out of Virtual Memory).  I did a little research and found that there is No Consensus on how best to set this feature.

Some places suggested exact figures, some suggested keeping the min and max numbers the same, some suggested setting them as relative to the total RAM in the 'puter (with different estimates of what ratios work best and different values for the start and max numbers).

I assume these folks all differed because they were all trying to do different things.

But most of us here are all trying to do the same thing with our computers, so maybe I'll get a direct and useful answer here!

I know Nothing of Virtual Memory beyond a simple definition.

But I now have 1.256 GB of RAM and want to update my settings!

I set the numbers to 1.25 GB for both Starting Value and Max Value because it seemed the most logical thing to do.

However; Logic is a reef of pretty flowers ...  that smell AWFUL!

So, with that in mind, does anyone here have any suggestions for how best to set this aspect of a (windows based) computer to Optimize performance?

I'd hate to have parted with all those Vintage issues of Tales From The Crypt and Weird Science without getting the most out of the trade!

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Peace

[lycium]

changing your virtual memory settings won't affect your computer's performance at all, only how much memory it can use in times of dire need. your gig of memory will definitely help performance, but once you're in the land of virtual memory you can pretty much forget about performance.

with 1gb of memory i'd suggest 2gb of virtual memory; if you've space to spare just make it 3gb for a total of 4gb. however, in 32bit windows a program can only access up to 2gb of memory - so that's really only useful if you're running a ton of demanding apps, and again it won't make anything go faster, it'll just make it possible.

[Sockratease]

One of my biggest problems was Constantly getting warnings that my Virtual Memory was too low.

This happened often when rendering animations.

I thought the ram would solve it instantly, but I still got the warning shortly after installing the memory (tested and was recognized and reported in system properties!).

I checked the settings for "start and max" and they were surprisingly low.

I just changed them to the 1.25 GB each and have not had a warning since, so I thought it was relevant...  but this computer has Known registry type issues I can't fix.

Thanks for the information!

[Nahee_Enterprises]

It is always best to increase your real physical memory (RAM) to whatever your computer's maximum will hold.  If it does not get used all the time, no big deal.  But it is better to have it available than not have enough for when you really need it.   

As to the area allocated onto your hard drive for use as virtual memory, this depends on on how much unused disk space you have available, and how many drives you have.  This area is a "paging file" that Windows uses as if it were real RAM.  Usually the recommended "total paging file size for all drives" is fairly close to what you will need to have it set to (which means letting the System manage the size).  Otherwise, increasing it to a Custom size of 2 or 3 gigabytes should be sufficient.

[heneganj]

You can increase performance from virtual memory by doing the following (in Windows, at least):

- Set minimum and maximum pagefile size to the same amount, at least 1.5X physical RAM
- Defrag your disks
- Defrag your system files with PageDefrag from sysinternals.com (now at Microsoft)
- Put the pagefile on a separate physical disk to your Windows partition, but don't put it on a different partition on the same disk.

Hopefully these suggestions should improve things.