Computers & Networking

[NoviceUserLoriW]

I have an e-machines with 512mb of physical memory, and 2.0gb of virtual memory. My question is why do most new computers have less than 512 mb if they are supposed to run faster? The way I understand it, the physical memory is what is used when I'm searching, and the virtual memory is what gets saved on my computer. I found out that older computer usually have 512mb, but newer computers in the same price range as my e-machines have usually about 200-300mb. Does that mean they run slower than my current computer? The available physical memory is down to 61 mb and it was at 119mb the other day, and I deleted some stuff off of my computer, I'm not sure why it decreased so much when I even eliminated some of the games that I had on my pc. Do I need to defragment my pc, or what other things can Ido to increase the physical memory. The available virtual memory is 1.96 out of 2.0, and that has me even more confused. Can someone give me some guidance?

[Starflyer59]

The average Physical (RAM) memory in most computers is about 2-4GB. Virtual Memory is hard drive space that is set aside to be used as system memory for swap files and other files that the Operating System needs to access quickly.

You can set that virutal memory for whatever you want it to be.

As far as freeing up Physical (RAM) memory you can upgrade your memory by adding more RAM chips, or you can look at the Processes tab located under the task manager and see what processes are using the most RAM and then decide if you can unistall any application that might be using up that RAM.

Defragging will help with cleaning up fragmented clusters and will usually help with speeding things up. Defragging will not normaly free up Physical (RAM) memory.

Don't really worry about Virutal Memory. Increasing your RAM is what you need to focus on.