Virtual Memory and System Performance

For virtual memory, Microsoft's official definition is: temporary storage used by computers to run programs that require more memory than the computer has. For example, a program can access 4 GB of virtual memory on a computer's hard drive, even if the computer has only 32 MB of RAM. Program data that is not currently loaded into the computer's memory will be saved to the page file. Under normal circumstances, we will see a file named pagefile.sys under c:, this is the page file used as virtual memory, it will have hundreds of M or even hundreds of M.

Before I introduce how to use high-speed virtual memory to improve system performance, let me talk about how to change the virtual memory settings:

1. Open "system";

in the Control Panel 2. Click the "Performance Options" on the "Advanced" tab, then click "Change" under "Virtual Memory".

3. In the "Drives" list, click the drive containing the page file you want to change. In the "Page file size of selected drive", type the new page file size in megabytes in the "Initial Size (MB)" or "Maximum (MB)" box, and then Click "Set". Microsoft recommends that page files be 1.5 times the size of physical memory.

4. If you reduce the minimum or maximum value of the page file settings, you must restart your computer to see the changes. Usually increasing does not require a restart of the computer.

There are usually two ways to improve system performance by adjusting virtual memory:

The first type: put the page file on a different hard disk than the hard disk used by the operating system. Hard disk controller. There are two meanings: First, if only two hard disk controllers control two hard disks, then one operating system uses one, and one page file uses one; second, if there are multiple hard disk controllers controlling multiple hard disks, then the operating system uses one. Split the page file so that the page file is evenly distributed on the hard disk controlled by the remaining hard disk controllers. In this way, when the system reads the contents of the virtual memory, it will use multiple hard disk controllers to read data from multiple hard disks at the same time, and the speed will be greatly improved; when writing data, VMM (virtual memory management) will avoid the busy hard disk controller. And the data is written on the hard disk of the controller relatively free, so the performance of reading and writing virtual memory will naturally improve a lot.

Second: Set the initial size and maximum value of the page file to be equal. This can greatly reduce the file fragmentation caused by frequent reading and writing of data, and can also improve the performance of the system.

In fact, from Microsoft's definition of virtual memory, virtual memory is actually a temporary replacement of the hard disk as a physical memory when the physical memory is insufficient, and the hard disk read and write speed is far less than the memory The speed of reading and writing, so the most fundamental way to improve system performance should be to increase physical memory, but now the memory has been relatively cheap.