[WOD]

Originally Posted by Zantham

Did someone say "technical"??

Adjusting the Memory Usage setting between Programs and System Cache is basically telling Windows how to prioritize its memory. Windows can do caching to hard drive, and it can do caching to RAM. Obviously RAM is much faster than hard drive. When set to Programs, XP sets aside 8MB of RAM for caching. Set it to System Cache allows XP to use all available RAM (minus 4MB) for caching. This caching is dynamic, so you wont run out of memory. This setting allows XP to load its entire kernel into RAM as well, which can really speed up how responsive XP reacts. This setting can provide boosts even with as little as 512MB or even 256MB RAM, but to really benefit you need 1GB+ as von Zelda says. You will really notice the biggest difference with the System Cache enabled if you have to exit Sh3 for some reason and later reload the game (without a reboot inbetween).

If you're REALLY geeky, you can do as I do and run part of SH3 off of a RAM drive. I load a GWX campaign savegame in less than 30 seconds on my laptop . I have 3GB of RAM, RAID0 hard drives, and use a 1GB RAM drive and no paging file to accomplish this.

Good explanation...better I couldn´t have written it