Can there be too much virtual memory?
January 24, 2011 by Mind Hurts
Filed under memory hurts
I have 1 gigabytes of RAM. I currently have 2000 megabytes of virtual memory. If I add more virtual memory, will my computer run faster and better. Also, will using too much virtual memory hurt my computer?
No it wont. As a matter of fact, it will run worse. Virtual memory is a temporary space on your hard drive to save data thats constantly being shuffled in and out of ram to and from your hard drive because you have more applications running than what your ram can deal with. Its a poor mans ram if you will and a pathetic attempt at that. Turn some crap off or get more ram.
Yes, it is possible to assign too much virtual memory. For example, if you have a 100 GB harddisk and you assign 50 GB for virtual memory. The extra space only wastes space on harddisk and doesn’t have any performance benefit over assigning only 3GB or something like that.
The simple rule of thumb people uses is to assign around 2-3 times as much as your RAM. Below this range, you’ll not have enough memory for all applications and above this range you’ll not notice much performance benefit.
Assigning too much virtual memory can also lead to harddisk fragmentation problem, which may degrade performance.
Virtual memory acts as ram when your ram is not enough to run programs..
Well, you have 1 gb ram so its just fine having 2gb virtual memory..
Besides, having more virtual memory actually does not help much in boosting ur computer..
I suggest u to upgrade ur ram as memory buffer from ram is much faster than from disk..
Sometimes, there are some functions that limit the virtual memory and uses more ram to
speed up the computer.
Generally, ram is much faster than virtual memory so my advice,
upgrade ur ram..
Yes, you can have “too much”.
2 gigs is more than enough, and some suggest setting it at 1.5 times your ramsize.
Personally, I just let windows manage the pagefile size. It’s very good at it.