virtual memory

[Jaxon]

system
p11 350 , 128 ram , mobo abit bx2 440 , os win98se,
primary use gaming
question , under virtual memory settings , should i let windows manage them , or can someone recommend min. / max. settings
thks in advance

 

[Jaxon]

ok guy's , one of three things , you all think i'm an idiot for asking , or you think i should know , or your all to busy on a friday night

 

[BrianL]

Setting the virtual memory settings yourself rather than letting windows control it, usually allows you to control your disk fragmentation much better. Less fragmentation, better performance from virtual memory. I am assuming that since you are into gaming you have a good video card and are not using onboard video. It would also depend on the size of your games and how much has to be loaded into memory and if you are trying to run several programs simultaneously. (If you are a serious gamer, I would doubt that).

Setting too big a virtual disk can actually slow your system down. There are programs out there that will tell you an optimum setting for the disk. It is sometime practical to make a seperate disk partition just for the virtual memory so that it remains contigueous and fast(er). I normally set the min size to 50% of my RAM size and the max size to 300% RAM. If that size doesn't work for you with one application running, then it is time to buy more RAM.

 

[Guest]

The "rule" has been to set your virtual memory to 1.5 X's your physical memory. In your case this would be 192Megs. Set the min & max to this number. A better way to determine virtual memory needs is to use your system monitor utility. Let windows determine the VM during this process. Run it in the background and save the results to a file. A weeks time is more than ample. Look at the results and add a 5% ceiling. Use this for your min & max mem setting. This method will give you an acurate VM that is suited to your system and applications.

<font color=green> slice-N-dice </font color=green>

Nothing travels faster than the speed of pain

 

[LTJLover]

The rule of thumb I use is min and max set to 256 meg, unless you have a lot of HD space. In that case you can do min/max 512meg. Make sure you set min and max the same. It actually helps a lot. And before you set that, do a defrag.

Jon
"Water-Cooled CPU Runner"