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It's a $16 investment to guarantee higher performance from your machine regardless of configuration. And it's a one-time investment that will span every machine you have. It's the best way, there's no debate on this.
Hell, my machine's got got 32 gigs of RAM and I still ReadyBoost a drive in it. It's so cheap, it's silly NOT to do it. It's one of the best features of the Vista/7 evolution.
Having an SSD negates any performance increase from Readyboost. ecache.sys will write to RAM, Superfetch (on SSD) and to duplicate to the Readyboost device. Readyboost device will be ignored if the data is available in RAM and/or SSD. While the RAM is flushed upon hibernation and shutdown, superfetch is still available on the SSD.
Further, readyboost can only stripe across multiple readyboost devices and not in conjunction with RAM, HDD, SSD. This might change in the future, but is a current limitation. Virtual memory, on the other hand, can stripe across multiple types of devices.
It's not a "guaranteed" performance increase regardless of configuration.
The first few posts of this thread resolve the OP's concern. Let's not confuse anyone here.
I believe Russinovich said that you need to have less than 1.5GB of available RAM for readyboost to be effective.
That's funny, because I have SSD's in my rig, and I receive an (albeit slight) performance boost by tagging in the thumb drive when I'm being particularly nasty to my machine. And I'm probably one of only a few people around here who uses those drives, given their cost-per-gig compared to traditional platters, which means that for a full 99+% of the people here, the flash drive solution will take full effect and result in better gains than I obtain with it.
Second, the "answer" to OP's question was to open his system to more VMM usage or look for programs with memory leaks. The former is slower in terms of performance than simply putting in a thumb drive, and the latter is something that he wouldn't be able to readily fix even if he found one. While that answer works, per se, the other solution is better.
Lastly, go up to ANY hardware engineer. ANY one, and ask them what "VM" means. If you get more than 1 out of 100 that says "Virtual memory" instead of "Virtual machine", I would be shocked. The natural evolution of technology has resulted in a disambiguation of the acronym, with virtual machine taking the VM.
I just went back and re-read this thread. So far, we do not know what operating system is on the OP's machine, so all the bragging about flash drives and SSD's strike me as being essentially off-topic. From the beginning of the thread, it was obvious that everyone participating understood VM to mean Virtual Memory.
When I encounter issues like that "Low Virtual Memory" error, I often change the swap file to a fixed size about double that of the physical RAM. It has been effective so far on machines running XP or earlier, but I have not needed to do it on a Vista or 7 box.
Walk up to me and ask my opinion of engineers and I will tell you that 99 out of 100 probably don't know what virtual memory is and wouldn't know what to do with it if you told them. You are presenting a specious argument.
The disambiguation of VM has not limited the acronym VM to virtual machine, which would be glaringly obvious to anyone reading this thread. Everyone here, but one, uses it for virtual memory as well.
As usual (and I am as guilty as anyone else) the topic of the thread got hijacked. Semantics aside I think mensaguy has pretty much nailed it.
Besides the entire argument is moot because
1. The OP never came back
2. The OP never came back over a year ago 3. There are other reasons, but I'll play nice.
About all you can do is add another 512MB stick, and make sure your virtual memory is set to system managed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asheville Native
OP, that is just about all you can do with that system.
The good news is that you should be able to pick up the other 512MB at a very reasonable price, and with XP Home you should have a noticeable up tick in performance. Adding that extra memory is the best bang for the buck you can do until you replace it.
Memory sticks have dropped down in price significantly significantly, you can get a 512 MB, or a 1 GB memory module for less than $30, however, also make sure the memory chips have at least a 600 MHZ clock speed because that's also a factor that makes a difference in the overall performance of the computer.
On the virtual memory, the optimal setting can vary from one comuter to another, and if you have a 64-bit operating system, like Windows XP Server 2003, or 2008, Vista, or 7, which can accomodate more RAM memory than you'll ever need, depending of course on the motherboard you're using. So if you have.. let's say 16 GB of RAM, you probably don't have to worry about setting the VM, just let Windows manage it.
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