Virtual and Physical memory?

Question

Does virtual and physical memory work together....For example. Lets say I have 1 GB of PHYSICAL RAM and I put 3000 MB of Virtual RAM would My PC run like it has 4 GB of RAM?????

Answer 1

No,
Your PC runs (sort of) like it has 3 GB or RAM.

My analogy is a valet parking lot with space for 100 cars, and another 30 out in the alley.

The parking lot can act like they have space for 130 cars, even though they only have 100. The customers probably won't notice their car was stuffed out in the alley. It only takes the employees a little longetr to fetch teh car.

In your computer, the overflow "parking" is on your disk drive, which is much slower than memory. If you have to page fault a lot, you will notice the performance.

Answer 2

I'm always amazed at the answers about virtual memory, even from the "techs".
First, RAM(physical memory) is on the motherboard and the fastest way to store and retrieve the data and core functions of both the operating system and applications. The more RAM the more efficient the system runs.
Virtual memory got it's name from being data in the same format as that stored in RAM. What that means is the data has already been read and compiled by the CPU and executes just like data from RAM. What makes it slower is it is written and then retrieved from the harddrive in a special file called a pagefile. It is stored contiguously so it is retrieved much faster than data from a normal file on the disk.
The operating system as well as applications look for and use virtual memory for neccessary but lower usage functions and data lists to leave more RAM for the core operating code of the system or application. An example is the save as function. It is neccessary but doesn't need to be in RAM.
Normally, virtual memory is 1.5 x RAM. There are exceptions, such as your example. With 2Gb of RAM, the pagefile (VM) only needs to be 128Mb or so just to take advantage of the reasons mentioned above.
Anything less than 1Gb should be tested with amounts less than the 1.5 multiplier to see what works the best. There are other considerations like how much video memory is available, how much cache is on board, how many devices are attached, you get the idea.
Having a very large virtual memory amount could actually reduce performance.
All this information is available and published on the Microsoft web site if your interested. Hope I've helped.

Answer 3

Physical memory refers to the amount of RAM installed in the computer. Logically this memory is treated like a vast grid with each cell holding a 1 or a 0 and the processors uses the physical address of the column and row in the memory to read and write to each cell. In the old days, when all those memory addresses were full the computer would crash, or at the very least it could hold no more data. To over come this situation the operating system, Windows for most people, will take the information in portions of the physical memory that are not currently being used and save to the harddisk in the computer. The swap file that Windows sets up to hold this information on the harddisk is referred to as Virtual memory. Because retrieving information from RAM is much faster than retreiving information from a harddisk. Pulling information from virtual memory can significantly slow down a computers performance. Hope this helps

Answer 4

not quite. sure, when your RAM is used up, your OS will begin to use the Virtual Memory. but it isn't quite the same as RAM. When your hard drive is being used for VM, then it will actually be slower, this is because you hard drive is also being used to access files for your OS, programs, and any documents you have open. This is why it is actually better to use a slave or external drive (that won't hardly be used for files) for your systems Virtual memory. and to get the best results multiply the amount of RAM you have by 1.5 to get the amount of VM you should run (example bellow)

lets say you have 2GB of RAM
2GB x 1.5 = 3GB
so 2GB of RAM will need about 3GB of VM.

Here is another tip you may find interesting. To find out how much minimum ram your computer ram needs use the formula bellow, where x = processor(s) speed, y = number of processors, c = hard drive(s) space (in GB), and r = min. RAM needed (in GB).

r = [(xy)*(c/2)]

Answer 5

Yes and no... If your problem is that you're actually running out of memory to run programs, then inceasing virtual memory will help, at the expense of speed. If (as I would guess) you're interested in a performance boost, it won't help. Virtual memory means that your computer writes information from RAM/physical memory (pretty fast) to disk (relatively slow). The more data you can keep in RAM without writing to disk, the faster the system will run.

Answer 6

No. Because virtual RAM is actually on your hard drive and is slow like a hard drive. If your virtual RAM in use is high in comparison to real RAM then you need to add more real RAM. It's cheap and you would be amazed at how much better your computer will run if you are not RAM constrained.
Good Luck.

Answer 7

"virtual ram" is what windows uses when it runs out of physical ram and swaps out what is in the current physical ram to the hard disk "ram".

Virtual ram is much much slower than physical ram.

Also, 32-bit Vista can't use over 3gb of memory. To have 4gb available to Windows it has to be the 64-bit version.

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Answer 8

Virtual and physical memory work together. But they're very different.

You can only add physical memory to your computer. And you should put in as much as you need and can afford.

Virtual memory steps in when there isn't enough physical memory - it uses hard drive space to swap things in and out of physical memory. You don't buy virtual memory, your computer pulls it from your hard drive space. It's also extremely slow.

so the answer is no.

Answer 9

virtual memory is essentially in storage in case you run out of RAM. If you are using the maximum amount of RAM then your system will begin using virtual memory for other applications.

Answer 10

No virtual memory is not as effective as physical memory . From http://fixit.in