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Why Use Virtual Memory In Modern Systems?
Cyberhwk writes "I have a system with Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit) installed on it, and it has 4GB of RAM. However when I've been watching system performance, my system seems to divide the work between the physical RAM and the virtual memory, so I have 2GB of data in the virtual memory and another 2GB in the physical memory. Is there a reason why my system should even be using the virtual memory anymore? I would think the computer would run better if it based everything off of RAM instead of virtual memory. Any thoughts on this matter or could you explain why the system is acting this way?"
Memory exists to be used. If memory is not in use, you are wasting it. The reality is that your system will operate with higher performance if unused data is paged out of RAM to disk and the newly freed memory is used for additional disk caching. Vista's memory manager is actually reasonably smart and will only page data out to disk when it really won't be used, or you experience an actual low-memory condition.
We who know what we are doing are free to take the risk of running our computers without a swapfile.
Most people are not in a position where they can be sure that they will never run out of physical memory. Because of that, all operating systems for personal computers set up a swapfile by default: It's better for joe average computer owner to complain about a slow system than for him to lose his document when the system crashes because he filled up the physical memory (and there is no swap file to fall back on).
Stop the brainwash
You must be confused about virtual vs. physical memory.
Indeed. When I read this story my knee jerk reaction was "please be gentle." And thankfully the first +5 post on this story is informative and helpful and relatively kind.
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I fear the "turn off your computer, put it in a box and mail it back to the manufacturer" hardcore hardware experts that are going to show up in 3
Actually no the author was correct in Microsoft's Windows' terms. This is the exact text used in System Properties -> Advanced tab under Virtual memory:
"A paging file is an an area on the hard disk that Windows uses as if it were RAM."
You might think well they said paging file not virtual memory, well click on Change button and you'll see the dialog pop up named "Virtual Memory" of which you can specify multiple paging files on multiple drives if you wanted to. Defaulted to a single paging file on the C:\ or boot drive. So blame Microsoft for the confusing use of virtual memory and paging file back and forth. I guess they mean by virtual memory as in the collection usage of paging files after the fact (for those situations where there's more than one paging file used, just like on Linux you can have more than one swap file in use).
Anyway, I too have seen Windows 2000 and XP just love to make heavy use of the paging file even though there is clearly enough physical memory available. Some friends of mine have even disabled Windows from using a paging file completely, at first you will get a warning about it, but other than that they have reported better system performance and no draw backs noticed since then. This is on systems with at least 3GB of RAM.
This space is not for rent.
This should generate some polarized discussion.
There are two camps of thought.
One will insist that, no matter how much memory is currently allocated, it makes more sense to swap out that which isn't needed in order to keep more free physical ram. They will argue until they are blue in the face that the benefits of doing so are good.
Essentially - your OS is clever and it tries pre-emptively swap things out so the memory will be available as needed.
The other camp - and the one I subscribe to - says that as long as you have enough physical ram to do whatever you need to do - any time spent swapping is wasted time.
I run most of my workstations (Windows) without virtual memory. Yes, on occasion, I do hit a "low on virtual memory error" - usually when something is leaky - but I prefer to get the error and have to re-start or kill something rather than have the system spend days getting progressively slower, slowly annoying me more and more, and then giving me the same error.
This is not to say that swap is bad, or that it shouldn't be used - but I prefer the simpler approach.
Whether or not it works (and I'm not sure how well it does), there's something odd about swapping out RAM contents to disk so that you can mirror disk contents in RAM.
I'm fine with folks not knowing about computers. That's cool. The thing that annoys me, though, is that they're /proud/ of it. Its like its a badge of honor! Any sort of discussion about computer issues will always bring up some yahoo who says "Oh, I don't know a /thing/ about that! hur hur, in my day, all we had was pen and paper..." etc etc etc. The fact is, knowledge - basic knowledge - of computers is only going to get more important. Hiding your head under a rock isn't going to magically make it go away.
And its not the age thing, either - I've got a friend who is in his 70's, and his knowledge of technical things is way up there - he's a pure linux guy, uses myth to serve TV content all around the house, and is a very active member in the local unix club. Some people just don't seem to want to learn the basics.
Part of it too is that *everybody* has their stupid moments. The kind where, afterward, you realize just how dumb you were. Some like to pretend they've never been guilty of it, but they're often the worst offenders. (Same goes for doing asinine things while driving.)