how can virtual memory helps to speed up my computer?

5 thoughts on “how can virtual memory helps to speed up my computer?”

1. scrubbag says:

   December 12, 2010 at 6:33 pm

   Virtual memory is not RAM, and not Hard drive. Well, in a sense, it is hard drive. But it is like a place to put information that your computer accesses and makes it run faster.

   Let’s say you had a garage, and you had hundreds of files stashed in it. And your kitchen table was where you did your work. Your table would be RAM, your garage the Hard drive. Now, you start work, you go to the garage and get some files on letter A and work on Letter A on your table.
   Your table holds all of letter A, and has room for more. And being right there in the kitchen, you can get to them fast. You see everything in front of you.

   So you keep working, and making more pages . But soon, you run out of space on the table because you keep making more pages and adding them to letter A. So now your table (RAM) is full and you can’t put anymore on it. You will have to send some to the garage to make room on your table. So you send some back. But then you find that you need some of these files you sent back, and you don’t have space on your table for them, so you have to send more back and bring out the ones you want.
   That is a slow process, since you have to go to the garage and get the ones you want and to take the others back.
   So, you put a table in the garage, and you put some files there. This would be Virtual Memory. You don’t have to go to the file cabinets in the garage to get to your files, they are on the table in the garage. But you still have to walk back and forth.
   The table inside the garage (Virtual Memory) is not as slow as going to the garage (HD) and looking through the file cabinets, but not as fast as having it on the table in the kitchen.(RAM)

   So that basically is how it works, in a sense. Your best bet is to try to increase your table size in the Kitchen. (RAM) but increasing the table in the garage helps, some also.(Virt mem)

   As to how big to make it, some say twice the size of your Ram, others will say more, and so on. Just set it at around 2048 to begin with and see how it works, If you don’t use it all, you can cut back or if you need more, add more.

   But your machine is an old one, and for today’s software, it will work hard trying to do things.
   Window 3.0 was around 30 Mb in size as compared to today, maybe 10Gb. So it takes a lot more computer to handle Windows XP then it did to work Windows 3.0 or Windows 95.

2. Arnold Davison says:

   December 12, 2010 at 6:33 pm

   Virtual memory actually slows down your computer but you need it. Its just there in case your system needs more memory than there actually is so it uses the slow hard drive for it. This is your virtual memory. I suggest setting it at 2048mb

3. Jason says:

   December 12, 2010 at 6:33 pm

   When system starts to use virtual memory aka swap space, this indicates that you are running out of physical memory. Hence the system will be slow. I would recommend you to maximize the RAM for the hardware. Better yet, it’s time for you to toss that junk away and get yourself a system that can do circles around what you got for $300.

4. Not Sure says:

   December 12, 2010 at 6:33 pm

   Set it to 4096. However, virtual memory is far far slower than physical RAM. If you are able to do so, installing more RAM will have a much greater effect.

5. Dave says:

   December 12, 2010 at 6:33 pm

   You should really upgrade your PC. As a computer enthusiast, it is mind boggling to see people still use this ancient technology. This hardware was out in the mid to late 90’s and applications that have came out in the past 6-7 years don’t even support it. Sorry, I don’t mean to be offensive.

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