Pack Rat
Posts: 594
Joined: 5/8/2000 From: north central Pennsylvania USA Status: offline
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Urquhart, Mai Thai explained it well. To go a step further there are a couple of things I do and did, and I stress "I do", to insure smooth sailing. Windows usually manages your swap file for you, it is a generalization of what the average home user might need for a swap file. Since different software requires different memory needs, it can be easy to run out of the faster RAM memory and need the slower swap files on your hard drive. So I use a program that allows me to override the Windows settings (which you can do anyway) and it sets the swap for the use of the computer need that I pick. I also use a RAM recovery program, which allows me to reclaim RAM memory that was supposed to be released after using a program that wasn't. You may already notice this, when using Windows for a while your machine gets slower and slower and the only way to get it back to speed is to reboot. You can do a search or email me and I'll get you (or anyone else) the links for the programs I use and I should also say there are other programs that do the same thing out there. Cacheman, for the swap file and RAMidle for reclaiming memory.
So the reason I was curious about his RAM and swap file size was to get out of testing it myself :) at least immediatly. If his RAM is low and (you'll always have some running Windows in the background and anything else you haven't turned off, so turn it off if you don't need it) he is using his swap file and all of a sudden the game requirements get high, lots of explosion graphics, added sound, and general mayham, his swap file might not be big enough to handle it all and it will crash to the desktop if not worse.
Folks RAM is the cheapest I've ever seen it. A one stick DIMM 256meg can be had for 95 bucks. The SIMM sticks are cheap as well. We as war gamers have been lucky for a long time, in that only recently have war game system requirments started rising. They won't gwt lower. If we want the bells and whistles we need the systems to run them. That doesn't mean you've got to run out and get a new machine (whish I could and I'm running a 350), there is a good chance to improve what you've got.
Didn't mean to carry on so when I started this, sorry :)
[ May 15, 2001: Message edited by: Pack Rat ]
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