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I allocated ~24GB of my hard-drive as "virtual memory" -- what I understand to be extra space that the computer can use as RAM. My system has 8GB RAM built in, so my assumption is that I'm pumping a whopping ~32GB of available RAM.
My question is, is that ~24GB of virtual memory less efficient than my built in RAM? And probably more importantly, what is the real difference between virtual memory and physical RAM?
2How about speed difference? The HDD has moving physical parts so it has a lot of delays. And it has much more complicated path through your motherboard than RAM. – Ashtray – 2014-05-02T05:08:56.357
3Also, virtual memory has to be reloaded into real memory before it can be used. – wendy.krieger – 2014-05-02T05:44:16.793
I wonder, do you really need 30 gigs of memory? What kind of applications you are using? It's kind of bad if you're going out of real memory capacity. At least you could make use of SSD if you're going to do that as HDDs are REALLY slow – Ashtray – 2014-05-02T05:46:35.153
My assumption is that the computer using all available RAM first, by default. Before the virtual memory even gets a chance. Is that so? – khaverim – 2014-05-02T05:50:41.633
You and @wendy.krieger are misusing the term "virtual memory", as if it was synonymous with the "backing store" or (as Windows calls it) the "paging file". You have allocated 24GB to the paging file. If you're using a 64-bit CPU and OS then there are 2**64 bytes of virtual memory per process. – sawdust – 2014-05-02T06:30:53.273
@sawdust the title-bar of the window in my screenshot says "virtual memory"... why then? – khaverim – 2014-05-02T06:41:41.313
virtual memory means many things including what we're using it for. Here it equates to virtual installed ram. @sawdust . – wendy.krieger – 2014-05-02T06:47:08.070
3The dialog box mentions "Paging file size" three times. It does not mention or ask for "virtual memory size" anywhere. The paging file is used by the virtual memory subsystem. So the box has the title "Virtual Memory" – sawdust – 2014-05-02T06:47:08.967