Memory management question

[Scott]

Maybe a dumb question, but I've tried the Internet w/o
success.

What I want to know has to do with physical memory use.
This question is for Windows 2000 Server on 32-bit Intel.

I've been able to determine that each task has its own 2GB
user space. Assume a 4GB RAM computer. What I want to
know: If a number of tasks co-exist and the sum of their
active user spaces exceeds 2GB, will the number of pages
in memory (not swapped out) exceed 2GB? I don't see why
not, and the answer is probably dependent on the
hardware. It seems to me that the system use of RAM is
most likely much less than the 2GB (potentially) allocated
for it. So, to put my question another way: on a 4GB
computer, if the RAM allocated to the System memory area
is much less than 2GB (for argument, let's say 500MB),
then is the remainder available for user memory space (in
this example, that would be 3.5GB)?

 

[Guest]

you have to remember that all machines dont have 4gb of ram, so it is avail ram + virt ram div by # of progs-whats allocated to the os,tsr's,running programs,system tray, etc
that's why ms recomends 1.5 to 2.5 times phy mem to your swapfile. when you excede that your processer starts working overtime, use perf monitor to answer your question

 

[scott]

Thanks, but:

I cannot use perf mon to answer the question; it is a
theoretical question, a thought experiment. I'm looking
to understand how the system works, but I don't have
physical embodiment of this right now.

By positing that not all machine have 4GB RAM, you
basically changed my question and so did not answer it. I
was not asking about the swap file, either. I'm asking
how the actual RAM gets filled up and used--when there IS
4GB.

--Scott

-----Original Message-----
you have to remember that all machines dont have 4gb of

ram, so it is avail ram + virt ram div by # of progs-whats
allocated to the os,tsr's,running programs,system tray,
etc.

that's why ms recomends 1.5 to 2.5 times phy mem to your

swapfile. when you excede that your processer starts
working overtime, use perf monitor to answer your question