Virtual Memory?

[Evil Beaver]

What should I set my virtual memory to be?

 

[sabre89]

I think its twice that of your hard memory.

 

[Mr. Redundant]

in this case more does not mean MORE

let windows determine your virtual ram, dont set it too high (virtual ram is slow ass ram)

 

[Shuzer]

There are ALOT of theories on this floating around.. there's no definite answer (although I recall one article which came dangerously close).

I find my system performance best at 2.5x/2.5x RAM (and yes, I know this is probably insane, but I tested alot of different settings)


The most common answer is "1.5 times your RAM," although, it varies from system to system. Really, I'm not sure if anyone knows the real answer..

 

[Asus]

It's a debated subject.
If you need to ask, then it's best to leave it alone.

Some say put min and max the same.
Some say 2.5x physical ram size.
I've seen 1.5x the size. Lot of different things posted.

Same with AGP Apeture. I have mine at 128MB right now I believe. 64 is pretty optimal as well.

 

[Shuzer]

It's a debated subject.
If you need to ask, then it's best to leave it alone.

Some say put min and max the same.
Some say 2.5x physical ram size.
I've seen 1.5x the size. Lot of different things posted.

Same with AGP Apeture. I have mine at 128MB right now I believe. 64 is pretty optimal as well.

I can't change my aperture, 32 is max, if I upgrade my BIOS, I can change it.. but my system won't boot
Funny problem, but I haven't seen any performance drops compared with benchmarks it being at 32

 

[blahblahblah]

AGP aperture size. I spent way too much time reading about that useless thing. If you have a modern video card, you shouldn't have to worry about it at all.

Virtual Memory is one of those things that you shouldn't have to worry about to much.

 

[psyno]

Mm so it really does depend on your amount of physical system RAM. If you have .25-.5 GB, then maybe 1.5 times that is a good number, on the assumption that you have however much RAM you have because you expect to be using it all. On the other hand, if you run a pretty typical desktop gaming station and have 2 GB, you don't want 3 GB of virtual memory, you want to disable it altogether! HDD I/O is on the order of 1000x slower than physical RAM, so minimize it!

Windows will waste some time resizing the VM if you don't give it a set size. Usually this is fine, but if you want to avoid it, give it a min and max that are equal. This will also prevent the swap/page file from getting fragmented, and it is VERY important that it remains defragmented. I usually prefer to set my swap files alone on their own partitions.

For the average user, Windows manages it fine.

The AGP Aperature is pretty worthless. Don't worry about it.

 

[Kyorisu]

Some programs (Adobe Acrobat Reader) for example will take along time to start if VM is turned off even if you had 2gb physical. They just prefer VM for some reason.

 

[jonbob]

I say let Windows decide.

"Bill knows best (TM)"