Is Increasing Vram Finally Worth It? I Ran The Numbers On My Windows 11 Pc

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• Rising RAM prices person made upgrading your PC much expensive.
• Virtual RAM is simply a little costly measurement of boosting an older computer's performance.
• Virtual RAM has constricted usage cases because it can't lucifer nan velocity of beingness RAM.

It's been a unsmooth 7 months aliases truthful for shoppers. Prices for RAM and PCs person surged to grounds levels, fueled successful portion by the rise of generative AI and broader economical turmoil. Because of nan value shifts, upgrading your aged machine -- aliases buying a caller strategy -- is now much costly than ever. There is immoderate bully news. RAM prices person precocious started to drop, but only slightly; representation and hardware stay very expensive.

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Affordability remains a awesome problem, though location is simply a solution, albeit a constricted one: virtual RAM. Also known arsenic virtual memory, this assets guidance characteristic allows PC owners to usage a information of their device's retention thrust arsenic an hold of strategy memory. As Lenovo explains, "it creates nan illusion of a larger, continuous representation space", arsenic if your machine has entree to much resources.

It's a neat measurement to agelong your computer's representation past its limits. However, it comes pinch important caveats. Virtual RAM is only a impermanent solution for enhancing PCs pinch constricted memory, not an outright replacement for beingness RAM.

Why is virtual representation not a existent RAM alternative?

Virtual RAM conscionable can't execute arsenic good arsenic beingness RAM. It trades velocity and responsiveness for other resources. PC gaming marque Corsair makes this point, stating that moreover nan fastest SSDs are "almost 10 times slower than RAM, and a difficult thrust is hundreds of times slower." Remember: RAM is designed for high-speed, impermanent retention of progressive data, while SSDs and difficult drives are built for semipermanent storage.

To put this into perspective, let's look astatine a real-world illustration utilizing my PC and comparison nan velocity of my 32GB of DDR4 RAM to nan velocity of my PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.

You tin find nan theoretical maximum bandwidth of your representation by multiplying nan MT/s worth by nan number of bytes sent per transfer.

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My desktop's RAM runs astatine 2400 MT/s (megatransfers per second) and has 2 64-bit channels (8 bytes). So, 2,400 MT/s × 8 bytes equals 19,200 MB/s (megabytes per second).

Compare that to nan velocity of my SSD. Using CrystalDiskMark, I measured its publication speeds of ~6,700 MB/s and constitute speeds of ~6,200 MB/s. That's little than one-third of nan speed.  

Even pinch a high-end SSD, nan velocity quality betwixt my RAM and retention thrust is significant. My DDR4 RAM tin deed 19,200 MB/s, while nan SSD peaks astatine 6,700 MB/s. Virtual RAM connected my PC will beryllium slower, person higher latency, and beryllium little responsive overall.   

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There's besides nan problem of representation thrashing. Thrashing occurs erstwhile a machine spends much clip moving information betwixt nan RAM and nan retention drive, which tin consequence successful freezing, dense lag, and mediocre performance. Lenovo, in different post, states that definite representation guidance techniques, specified arsenic page replacement algorithms, tin little nan likelihood of thrashing, but thing is perfect. 

Where does virtual RAM help?

Although I've focused truthful acold connected nan limitations of virtual RAM, virtual representation tin beryllium a genuinely adjuvant instrumentality successful nan correct circumstances. The cardinal is utilizing it responsibly. I urge utilizing virtual RAM to temporarily boost nan capacity of lightweight machines. 

Low-cost laptops don't often person a batch of representation to spare, truthful resources tin beryllium quickly exhausted. In specified situations, virtual representation tin thief a strategy tally smoothly, forestall crashes, and amended wide stability.

Also: How overmuch RAM does your PC really request successful 2026? A Windows and Mac master weighs in

A bully illustration of a instrumentality that tin use from virtual representation is nan Acer Aspire Go 15, a laptop we often urge for its affordability. At nan clip of this writing, it's connected waste for $275. That debased value comes astatine nan costs of performance. It only possesses 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM, which is rather debased by today's standards. 

Activating virtual RAM successful a lawsuit for illustration this won't move nan laptop into a high-powered machine, but it would let nan Aspire Go 15 to amended grip much tasks without slowing down aliases crashing.

Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

How to activate virtual RAM successful Windows 11

If you want to alteration virtual RAM successful Windows 11, nan process is reasonably straightforward. Start by typing "View precocious strategy settings" into nan Windows 11 hunt barroom and clicking nan first introduction you see. This will motorboat nan System Properties window.

From here, spell to "Advanced" > click "Settings" nether nan "Performance" conception > "Advanced" again successful nan caller model > Click "Change" nether nan Virtual Memory section. Uncheck nan container astatine nan apical branded "Automatically negociate paging record size for each drives," arsenic seen successful nan image below.

Screenshot by Cesar Cadenas/ZDNET

To found virtual memory, you will request to take a thrust to use. In this scenario, my PC only has a C: drive, truthful that's my only choice. If your machine has aggregate drives, usage whichever is fastest. Next, prime "Custom size" to allocate a circumstantial magnitude of thrust abstraction for virtual memory, measured successful MB. As a norm of thumb, 1,000 MB is astir 1 GB. Windows will supply a recommended value, specified arsenic 5,000 MB. For my needs, I will allocate 8,000 MB (or 8 GB).

When it comes to nan maximum size, online forums propose mounting it to 3 times nan first size, which successful this lawsuit is 24,000 MB (24 GB). Once done, click "Set", past click "Ok" > "Ok" connected nan pursuing page, past restart your machine to use nan changes.

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When you're done utilizing virtual memory, return to nan aforesaid Virtual Memory model and re-check "Automatically negociate paging record size for each drives" astatine nan top.

Can you disable virtual representation entirely?

It's imaginable to disable virtual representation by selecting "No paging filing" successful nan System Properties window, past clicking "Set", but it's not mostly recommended. As Lenovo points out, PCs trust connected nan relationship betwixt beingness and virtual memory. Disabling virtual representation will lead to each sorts of capacity issues.

Do Apple computers person virtual memory?

Yes, but it behaves otherwise from Windows PCs. Apple states that MacOS uses "secure virtual memory". It functions for illustration Windows virtual memory, temporarily moving information from RAM to nan difficult thrust erstwhile beingness representation is limited. The awesome quality is that unafraid virtual representation is encrypted. It can't beryllium accrued aliases decreased.