Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
The Question
SuperUser reader IMB poses the following question:
Can IMB squeeze by with his page-file-workaround (in order to avoid drumming up some expensive vintage RAM)?
Will it help if I buy more RAM since the current performance is already acceptable, will it be even faster?
Will just having 256MB RAM but 4GB page file have some implications (maybe the HDD is being pounded or something)?
The Answers
SuperUser contributor Indrek writes:
Hans Passants chimes in with some insight into why the computer might feel faster:
Your decision will depend on what you subjectively deem to be acceptable for the task you are using the computer for. You are certainly not using it for office work?
For more information about the Windows page file, check out: HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It?
It matters a great deal since you’ll be using the paging file a lot more frequently with this little RAM. A fragmented paging file causes a lot more disk head seeks and that’s slow.
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