Virtual RAM

[Tyler]

A friend told me that he knows a guy who is running 7 Gigs of RAM, along with 20 Gigs of Virtual RAM. What exactly is Virtual RAM, how does it work, could it speed up my computer, and how would I go about installing it?

[slash112]

Virtual memory only comes into play if you run low on RAM, I think. It is basically just a certain amount of hard drive space saved for emergencies. And I am sure most computers have like roughly 1GB as default. You can change it somewhere, can't remember where. I'm pretty sure that is correct anyway.

[ninja9578]

Virtual RAM is where the OS starts putting what's in the RAM out to disk when it's running out so that the active program runs faster. There is no such thing as 20GB of virtual ram, the OS will use as much as it needs until it runs out of space.

[Tyler]

So I can't add partition off a part of my hard drive as virtual RAM and use it to speed up my computer? Like to make my games run better?

[ninja9578]

It only makes your computer run faster if you run out of memory. *nix uses a lazy page swapping system, meaning everything stays in RAM until the OS needs more.

[Tyler]

It only makes your computer run faster if you run out of memory. *nix uses a lazy page swapping system, meaning everything stays in RAM until the OS needs more. Does that apply if I'm using Windows 7? (Because I am.)

[Ynot]

Virtual memory / swap space is a section of hard disk that is reserved by the OS for when the system runs out of memory Hard disks are considerably slower than RAM, so no, it will not speed up a system (the only thing swap space does is mitigate the chances of running out of memory The only way to speed up a system is 1) get faster hardware 2) use more efficient software

[Tyler]

Virtual memory / swap space is a section of hard disk that is reserved by the OS for when the system runs out of memory Hard disks are considerably slower than RAM, so no, it will not speed up a system (the only thing swap space does is mitigate the chances of running out of memory The only way to speed up a system is 1) get faster hardware 2) use more efficient software Ok, thanks for clearing that up.

[ninja9578]

Virtual RAM is 10,000x slower than RAM, it will never speed up anything, just allow more stuff to run.

[Marvo]

I believe it's possible to use USB drives as pagefiles in Windows Vista and Windows 7. This might be slightly more efficient than a harddrive based pagefile, however, getting more RAM is always a better way to go about it. RAM is incredibly cheap anyway.