Virtual memory help?

Hey Guys,

what is the risk of using virtual memory on windows 7.
well I don't know if it is a risk but I want to download a game that needs virtual memory.

Cheers,

Euan.

Virtual memory has been used by operating systems since the early 1990s

Its a common way for OSes from Windows, mac and Linux to page excess memory to disk.

As such, all Oses and and applications use virtual memory, so there is no risk, it is a common form of memory management

Thanks alot got a little confused with the virtual memory.

Cheers,

Euan.

Euan said:

Thanks alot got a little confused with the virtual memory.

Cheers,

Euan.

Click to expand...

Memory is the space your computer loads programs into in order for the processor to be able to run them. Once upon a time, computers had a relatively fixed (and small) amount of RAM. So, when multi-tasking became commonplace, it became necessary to introduce a way to supplement physical memory - otherwise when you maxed out your physical memory, the computer couldn't do anything else until you closed some programs.

That's where virtual memory comes in. Virtual memory is an area of the hard disk that is reserved to behave as extra memory. Of course hard disks are several orders of magnitude slower than physical memory, so when you dip into it in a meaningful way, the computer will slow down. This is why adding more physical memory often makes a computer seem faster (in reality, it's no faster, it's just able to operate more efficiently).

Hope that makes sense. Now, why an application would care about virtual memory (as opposed to real memory), is anyone's guess. It's probably a sign that your computer needs a memory upgrade.

Also, moving this thread out of Anything Goes since we have an appropriate forum for Windows discussion.