Virtual Ram

[micahelt52]

Does increasing virtual memory help with gaming? I don't know whether to put this in graphics, since I'm only looking for performance. I'm trying to get more Frames Per Second

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

It will stop it from crashing if you run out of physiacl RAM, but no, it absolutely WILL NOT speed games up any. Virtual memory is on your HDD which is MUCH slower than physical RAM. If it has to use Virtual memory, it would actually slow the game down.

 

[micahelt52]

Well I'm using both types of ram, and it increased the FPS from 12 to like 23, and i don't know how that's possible

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

It should theoretically slow the game down if it has to actually use the virtual memory, like I said. All that swapping makes game performance take a pretty big hit.

Almost everyone uses both types, of course (as in they have virtual memory enabled), but it's only really there just in case you run of of physical RAM to stop the system from crashing. There's no way that it would actually speed the system (or games) up, if it was actually using the virtual memory. Not even with a SSD.

 

[micahelt52]

Maybe the game uses nothing but the physical ram, then sends everything else to virtual ram? Maybe i don't know

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

I don't don't know either. It doesn't make any sense at all to me that it would cause higher FPS. That's completely against everything that I've ever known, lol.

 

[micahelt52]

i would record it to show you, but with hypercam or fraps i would have about 6 fps

 

[Brett928S2]

Hi

It depends on machine spec ????

All the best Brett

 

[mouse24]

Its possible its waiting for open ram to become available to draw the things needed for the extra frames (like it loads parts of the map in virtual ram because the "real" ram is already being cached for other more important uses) and since it doesn't see the paging file available it simply slows everything down and waits?

(side note, I'm just guessing here)

Perhaps its just running out of address space and just queing?

 

[IainCheesecake]

Hi

It depends on machine spec ????

All the best Brett

No. He's asking if increasing virtual ram will provide better performance, so it has nothing to do with 'system spec' as I'm guessing you're going to say something about his cpu or gpu like all your other pointless answers.

And micahelt52, like what DJDeCiBeL said I too find it weird that it's increased your fps... should lower it if the games using the virtual ram rather than actual ram :S

 

[micahelt52]

Well i think i overkilled it by putting 30GB of Virtual ram, but my graphics card sucks, its integrated, and i only get 22 fps now on super low settings, and like 9-10 on low, is an ASUS 5450 with 1GB ram good?

 

[InvalidError]

Increasing virtual RAM does give the OS more space to dump unused stuff in the swapfile to free up physical RAM for active data set but there is no point in increasing it beyond the amount of junk typically loaded on your PC.

Ideally, you should have enough RAM to fit all active code and data with room to spare so the swapfile get little to no actual traffic beyond its role as a dump site for stuff that gets loaded but rarely used.

 

[micahelt52]

Best answer selected by micahelt52.