QuestinMarks :
i need to now about this Memory Virtual RAM
i understand that its not as good as real ram, but i was wondering if its still good for running programs like photoshop or playing games
also what is the recommended virtual ram limit to create, because i heard that its get slower if its too big
i want to use a part of a ext hdd for this
Physical memory is a scarce resource. Every program wants a lot of it, none of them are willing to relinquish it. In order to keep the computer running smoothly the operating system needs to have a way to ensure that only the most useful and frequently used data is stored in physical memory. The rest, the memory that is not used, or infrequently used, is ejected from physical memory. In order to preserve the state of the process to which that memory belongs (programs are not designed in a fashion that allows their memory to be arbitrarily revoked, just arbitrarily allocated), the ejected memory must first be saved somewhere, such as in a file on a hard disk (called a page file).
To be absolutely clear, the page file
is not RAM. It is a form of memory (typically magnetic storage), but it does not have the characteristics of random access and cannot be accessed by the program. When the operating system ejects part of a program's memory from the physical address space the process is completely transparent to the program. If the program later references that memory, the operating system must first bring it back into the physical address space before the program can proceed.
A reasonably sized page file does allow for the installed physical memory to be used more efficiently. However, no amount of it will make up for a sheer lack of physical memory. Background programs, services, etc... can have most if not all of their private memory written to the page file, and will be brought back in when something wakes that background process up. This will free up some physical memory for other tasks, but if that's not sufficient then there's nothing to be done.
The recommended page file size (as a sum of all page files in the system) is between 1x and 2x the amount of installed physical memory.
EDIT: as a side note, external hard disk drives cannot be used to store page files.
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