How much RAM to avoid virtual memory?

[Underseer]

I have 1GB of RAM and (at least on huge maps), I end up hitting virtual memory, which introduces obvious performance issues. Early in games on huge maps, there doesn't seem to be any performance issue until you quit the game or alt-tab out. Towards the end of huge map games, virtual memory causes slowdowns any time a leaderhead window comes up.

I've seen reports from people with 1.5GB and 2GB experiencing performance problems, but I'm not so sure their problems were due to virtual memory.

I would love to see people with 1.5GB, 2GB and even more run task manager in the background, play a game on a huge map, and report back here on whether or not your "Pagefile Usage" goes up.

Hopefully we'll be able to figure out what Civilization 4's "sweet spot" is for RAM amounts. I suspect it'll prove to be depressingly high.

 

[Zanmato]

Could always set 'DisablePagingExecutive' from 0 to 1 in the Registry, this will force any program to use all available RAM before paging to the HD.
Find it under 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/SessionManager/MemoryManagement/' at least in Windows 2000 Pro SP4. Not sure about XP.

Cheers,
Rob
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[Underseer]

I appreciate the suggestion, but given that I have only 1GB, I suspect this won't change much. Maybe I'll give it a try when I get more RAM.

 

[Die_Spieler]

You are hitting virtual memory because you are task switching, you could have 4 gig of Ram, and STILL have that problem. I guess, you would need a faster processor like the 3.6 gig Pentium 4 extreme edition, a friend bought it and he tells me that it is much faster than his previous 3.4 gig HT P4. He's running Quake4, HL2, FEAR, NFS:MW, etc, with almost all settings to high. So, If you want to run multiple applications and still have decent performance, get a new processor, because you have a good amount of RAM. Obviously, if you get more it won't hurt.

 

[VimesUK]

When I had 1GB of RAM I found that the game used up to 700MB or so of memory.
I am now playing a map of FX-Huge Map size which is 126% larger than huge and I am using 2GB of memory, which has totally transformed the game. The game though is using 950MB of memory, so the memory usage seems to scale with the available RAM.

Using Alt-Tab to other apps causes no large amounts of hard drive usage, in fact it just switches from one to another. The game plays very smooth, and all the map is revealed.

 

[Neon Deon]

You are hitting virtual memory because you are task switching, you could have 4 gig of Ram, and STILL have that problem. I guess, you would need a faster processor like the 3.6 gig Pentium 4 extreme edition, a friend bought it and he tells me that it is much faster than his previous 3.4 gig HT P4. He's running Quake4, HL2, FEAR, NFS:MW, etc, with almost all settings to high. So, If you want to run multiple applications and still have decent performance, get a new processor, because you have a good amount of RAM. Obviously, if you get more it won't hurt.

I dont think I have ever multi tasked while playing a 3D game.

So for me, would keying the registry to use ram first help with performance in the end game?

IMHO: If you dont shut down non-esential programs and services before playing a 3d game, you are asking for trouble.