RAM Vs VM

[Gengkor Den]

When running game which required a powerful graphic card,
(Let's focus only on games, not any other program)
Will XP improve performance if we turn off VM ?
since accessing RAM is far more faster compare to VM..

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

"Out of memory"

It's a phrase you're going to see if you disable VM and the system goes to
page. Even if you are not actively paging (and you won't if the amount of
installed ram is sufficient for the game), there will still probably be some
memory allocation that lands in the pagefile.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Brian Cryer]

When running game which required a powerful graphic card,
(Let's focus only on games, not any other program)
Will XP improve performance if we turn off VM ?
since accessing RAM is far more faster compare to VM..

I've got 1GB of RAM in my XP Pro box, and until recently I ran with no
paging file. Recently (when I started to use Visual Studio 2005) I found my
1GB wasn't sufficient and had to turn the paging file back on. I haven't
noticed any appreciable drop in performance.

Personally I would leave the system with a paging file/VM. If you do find it
pages a lot while playing your game (or any other application) then buying
extra RAM is the most effective route to improved performance.

regards,

Brian.

www.cryer.co.uk/brian

 

[Guest]

I was told that letting the windows decide would be best. I was told that
windows would decide which memory to use, so i would take it that windows
would use physical ram for game and virtual ram for stuff that is not
intensive or used. I guess this would make it use ram wiser i am not sure.
Sisandra says to set the virtual 2.5 times the amount of physical ram you
have, but i have heard others say different as well. I have been told by
many people not to turn off virtual ram becauase windows uses it for certain
things. I have 4 sticks of 512mb pc3200 ram and on average i use 500-600
physical ram and average 300-410 virtual. I guess you could use benchmark
software and see if there is adifference, i have Everest Home Edition and it
has a ram bench utility and i have sisandra and i guess you could time
certain things, otherwise your being able to see the difference by eye is
suspect to placebo effect.

 

[Ron Martell]

When running game which required a powerful graphic card,
(Let's focus only on games, not any other program)
Will XP improve performance if we turn off VM ?
since accessing RAM is far more faster compare to VM..

Let's get the terminology straight before we begin.

Virtual Memory (VM) in Windows XP refers to the total available memory
address space on the computer. This consists of two components -
physical RAM and the paging file, and the Virtual Memory total is the
sum of these two.

The full name for the paging file is the virtual memory paging file,
which sometimes gets shortened to just virtual memory, giving the
incorrect impression that the paging file is the virtual memory rather
than just one component of it.

Disabling the paging file is a bad idea, for a variety of reason.
One major reason is that it will hurt rather than help the overall
performance of the computer.

This is because Windows is required, by design, to identify memory
address space for all of the memory allocation requests that are
issued by application programs, device drivers, and windows
components; and also because these items typically ask for memory
allocations that are quite a bit larger than what they actually need
under normal circumstances. Windows handles this situation by
allocating RAM only to that part of the request that is actually used
and by mapping the unused portions to locations in the paging file.
Note that mapping the unused portions to the paging file does not
involve any actual hard drive activity - all that is required is
entries in the memory mapping tables maintained by the CPU.

If the paging file is disabled then all of the requested memory must
be allocated address space in RAM, increasing the RAM usage by a
significant amount (it can easily reach several hundred megabytes on a
moderately busy computer). And to provide this RAM it is likely,
unless there is a vastly excessive amount of RAM installed, that
Windows will have to reduce the size of the disk cache and/or forego
the practice of retaining code from recently closed applications in
RAM, just in case these applications are launched again. Both of these
items (reduced disk cache size and not retaining code from closed
applications) can have a negative impact on the performance of the
computer.

Hope this explains the situation.

Good luck



Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm