Guest
[Entry]
"Microsoft (even OSX and Linux and Unix.. AND SunOS, etc, etc) DEFAULTS are for the AVERAGE USER! LOL
Anyone with a shred of proper computer expertise with Windows (or appropriate OS) knows that there are MANY things you can tweak to get better performance. MS does not enable all these tweaks so the OS is compatible to the widest range of hardware configurations.
2GB ram is not a lot these days, but you can STILL prevent to the kernel from being swapped out. Even the windows 8 kernel doesn't take THAT much memory. Anythings else that's idle will get swapped if you load a large program.
That being said with larger video card memory (1.5-4GB being the norm), you should NOT be using a 32bit version of Windows anymore. 2GB of ram on 32bit Windows is a WASTE! If you put in a 3GB video card, kiss 1GB of your system memory goodbye. 32bit windows can only see 4GB of address space, and EVERYTHING must be loaded into that space, system memory, video memory, expansion card memory. That's why you want 64bit Windows. Most consumer intel/amd cpus are limited to about a 32-64GB memory address space - which is fine. I think the max for a fully enabled cpu and mobo is 64 or 128TB of ram.
Why is this good? Video cards, etc won't reduce your system memory. Plus if you only have 2GB ram on Win x64, you can expand it to as much as your mobo allows, and you don't have to do a thing to windows.
If you load Win x64, then you can stick any size video card in there and it won't affect system memory at all. Idle drivers, DLLs, exes, etc will be swapped to disk if memory is needed for a large app or game
Also to consider: 2GB is the largest amount of memory a 32bit app can use. A 32bit exe compiled in LAA (Large Address Aware) can use 4GB on a 64bit Win OS. So if you only have 2GB of RAM and fire up a 32bit LAA program, and it uses 3GB, your swap file will be swapping a LOT
For modern computers, 4GB is the MINIMUM you should have, preferably 8GB. For a gaming rig, nothing over 8 is needed. 16GB is great, but all it does is gives you a nice BIG read cache (or write if u have it enabled - Id recommend a APC power backup b4 enabling write cache back). Right now, I know of NO game that actually uses over 4GB of ram. I've seen a few use about 3-3.5 though.
Summary: don't bother keeping the kernel in memory with 32bit Windows... if you have Win x64 with 2 or more GB of ram, then DEFINATELY keep the kernel in memory! Because when the system runs low, you do NOT want the kernal swapped! This will really kill performance. Better to have other idle DLL, drives, serives, etc swapped instead"
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