I've just bought a new game, Medieval II, and it requires 512 MB if RAM. My computer only has 256 MB. However, i've heard that you can make up that difference in using virtual memory instead. I found in my system setup how to increase how much virtual memory is used as paging files, but I've also got an 500 GB external hard drive. I know that your supposed to use your primary hard disk for virtual memory, but would it be ok to use alot of the space on the external hard drive to run the game better?

yes u can but be prepared to have great lag time and frozen frames. reason being external increase access time and wht is the transfer rate of the hdd via usb, and i assumed connected by usb right? this will greatly reduce the game performance.....and while you are at it do u have the required video resolution for the game no built in vga on mobo will work either.

yeah it's a usb connection, and i do have the required video resolution, but i'm gonna just buy some more RAM for my computer, that way I won't have to worry about virtual memory

512 is extremely low these days, 256 is less than I've had for almost 10 years

New computers ship with 1024 at least, if they have less don't even consider them.
And seriously consider doubling that to 2048 which I expect to be the standard by the end of 2008. Machines with 4096 fitted from the factory are already appearing on shelves in the middle segment.

good move, you would probable ending up wrecking a good hdd, by putting such a large pagefile on it

It will be crap.

I have a P4HT 3ghz with 1gb ram and an ATI Radeon x600 256mb and Medevil runs slow.

512 is a minimum (to even get the game to start) requirement

i think that the games perfomance will be greatly affected by usage of virtual mem.it usually runs slow in 512 mb rams.so if u r finding any shortcuts i fera it will affect ur motherboard

That's why adding more memory can speed up a slow computer because the CPU can access the memory much faster than it can on other means of storage. I don't know the actual speeds but I can tell you it will be REALLY slow because that's what happend to me when I tried to run WOW with 256 mb RAM; it slowed down to a crawl on parts of the game that needed more memory because it had to constantly load from the hard drive. It shouldn't be too expensive to stick some more memory in there.

thats prety simple

ram = electronic = near speed of light
hdd = mechanical = only about 7000rpm