Allocating RAM

[Habitat]

Hi guys and gals

I have a quick question. I use Win2K Pro and seem to remember in the old days one could set the amount of memory a program would use somewhere.
Background of this question:
You know how they say that the more memory you got the faster your machine will run, up to a point. Well I got 512MB and I open task manager and started opening programs to see if I could use all the RAM. Even when crunching a video file the CPU goes up to 100% but the ram usage shown by task manager in only ±220MB. I got more RAM from my cousin and took the RAM up to 1 GIG with the same results, I could never get the task manager to show that I am using say 400MB or even 800MB in the case of the 1GIG RAM. I even made the virtual 0 but it kept default to a minimium of 20MB. Even then the memory usage did not really go up.

How can I say allocate 400MB of my 512MB to a program say a video editing program, or is the task manager showing false readings. Or is anything above 256MB a waste?

Hope you can help.

 

[riser]

It can depend on what program you're using, for example the program might say not to exceed a certain amount of RAM being used. If you're CPU is bogged down the program might not have a reason to continue dishing information to your memory because it would only be a waste.
Windows 2000/XP will automatically manage your Virtual Memory which is hard drive space it reserves should you run out of RAM.

You will want to check your BIOS for your AGP Aperture size. It should generally by half of your current system's memory. 128MB RAM = allocate 64MB, 512MB and higher, 256MB.
If you have it set to 256MB, 220+256= 476MB, in which case Windows may take control and keep free that extra memory should a system resource request it.

Riser