Solved: RAM & Virtual Memory

[junialum]

Hi!

I run a Win XP Home (SP2) and was just wondering about this.
I have a P3 1Ghz computer with 384 MB SD RAM. This is roughly a 5 year old machine that I'm passing on to my mom when I get a new computer.

Performance wise, the computer is rather average. Not too laggy neither too fast either.

I realised that my computer is using about 438 MB of Virtual Memory when I'm doing nothing at all. The rate is constant.

However, for my Physical Memory (I got this from Windows Task Manager >> Performance) Total is: 391664K, Available: 55972K, System Cache: 149660K. I believe some parts of my RAM is kinda missing. (System Chache + Available is not equal to Total) Why is this so?

Secondly, is there anyway to make windows to fully utilize my RAM before jumping into using Virtual Memory. I only have a single hard disk and it isn't fast (the speed is around 4500 ). Any ideas?

TIA

 

[Arcadion]

I believe some parts of my RAM is kinda missing. (System Chache + Available is not equal to Total) Why is this so?

RAM being used by programs + System Cache + Available RAM + any RAM being used for the onboard video = Total

The point of virtual memory is to create a temporary storage space for data in RAM that isn't being used much, to give the programs that are running at the time a larger proportion of the total system RAM to use. Reducing the virtual memory available will invariably worsen your overall performance. The total virtual memory size should generally be around 1.5x-3x the size of your real memory, or about 512MB to 1GB for a 384MB machine. If you let Windows manage the virtual memory itself it will default to something like this. A 1GHz P3 with 384MB RAM should be enough to run XP reasonably well.

 

[junialum]

Thanks a lot for your response.