Virtual Ram

[voltaire_ira]

I have a dual xeon 2.4 gig 533 FSB, dual channel ddr 1 gig ram and 360 gig HDD space ( 40 gig 5200 rpm, 2x80 gig 7200 rpm, and 2x80 gig SATA 7200 rpm Raid 0 config).

 

Lately, i am able to render big heavy scenes that usually eat up all my physical ram. something like 1.6 gigs of ram is taken by the rendering process. I have on gig which is mostly used up by the rendering software. Technically the .6 plus ram goes to the page file or virtual ram (is that true?). when the system starts to page file, the cpu usage drops way below 50% as it waits for the physical ram to clear and starts processing ram from the page file...if that's the case then when i render large files with ram usage of 1.6 for example, my cpu usage should drop...in my case, it doesn't..it continues to run at 100 % as if i have 2 gig worth of ram. before i used the page file assigned by the os (WIN XP PRO SP2) installed on a 80 gig HDD 7200 rpm drive.My cpu would drop to 50% below when ram reaches 1.0 gig. then if raid 0 configuration is faster, it should therefore be more efficient as a page filing drive. so i edited my system page file and pointed it to use the 160 gig Raid 0 stripping HDD..and there it is...as if i have 2 gig worth of ram...im currently rendering a scene and when i press cntrl+alt+del, the ram usage is 1.6 GB and cpu usage at 100% ( 4 graphs since my 2 xeons are HT capable).

 

now, can anyone confirm my little experiment with the page file using a RAID 0 drive.