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Nov 11th, 2007
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External Hard Drive for RAM

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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?
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kydude36 is offline Offline
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Nov 11th, 2007
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Re: External Hard Drive for RAM

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.
Last edited by bobbyraw; Nov 11th, 2007 at 12:50 am.
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Nov 11th, 2007
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Re: External Hard Drive for RAM

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
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kydude36 is offline Offline
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Re: External Hard Drive for RAM

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.
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Nov 11th, 2007
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Re: External Hard Drive for RAM

good move, you would probable ending up wrecking a good hdd, by putting such a large pagefile on it
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bobbyraw is offline Offline
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Nov 14th, 2007
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Re: External Hard Drive for RAM

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
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jbennet is offline Offline
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Nov 17th, 2007
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Re: External Hard Drive for RAM

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
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hrishikesh001 is offline Offline
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Nov 19th, 2007
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Re: External Hard Drive for RAM

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.
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explodinghead75 is offline Offline
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Nov 20th, 2007
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Re: External Hard Drive for RAM

thats prety simple

ram = electronic = near speed of light
hdd = mechanical = only about 7000rpm
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May 30th, 2010
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Use old hard disk for ram

Hi dear,
yesterday i bought new hard drive 160Gb bcoz my old drive is only 40GB, my question can i use 40Gb hard disk in RAM, is that possible, let me know, my mail id is SNIP

Thank

Prashant Sharma
Last edited by happygeek; May 30th, 2010 at 8:17 am. Reason: please keep help onsite here at DaniWeb
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This thread is more than three months old

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