Help me understand

[Corsairpro]

I've been reading about partitions and swap file size and all that stuff for in xp....

I have an Epox 8rda+ w/512 MB of pc3500 coming in a couple days. I already have a 40GB hdd waiting for it. The main game i'll be playing is BF1942 (on a ti4600).

Will windows use all 512MB of RAM BEFORE it starts using the page/swap file? Or will it use a combo of both.

 

[Heisenberg]

It will start to use the pagefile long before the memory is filled up. Windows handles virtual memory poorly compared to *nix/linux.

 

[spyordie007]

as I understand it technically it will always use a combination of both, the page file gets created immedeatly and there is a small amount of cashing that always takes place. The real differance is that once you run out of physical memory it is forced to move data from your physical memory to your page file in order to free up enough physical memory to carry out its tasks, this is what you should be concerned about.

Windows NT/2K/XP all really do a good job of memory management, the important question with these OSs has always been "do I have enough physical memory to run the applications I want to?"

-Spy