Will using a flashdrive as extra "RAM" work for Launchbox?

[Jared]

I am using an older gaming PC I built 10+ years ago. (Intel Dual Core E7400, 4 GB Ram, 512 MB Radeon 4850).   I have been running MAME with it for a while with no issues at all so I have been thinking of a front end and have decided on LB mostly on the advice of ETA Prime and his awesome YouTube channel.  I installed LB and imported all 2800+ games with no major issues until I went to run my first game. I received a "Low memory must shutdown" (paraphrasing of course) error message and LB quit.  I opened LB up again and it worked fine but only had a few minutes to play with it before heading to work.  Forums tell me the longer LB runs, the more RAM it eats up, which makes sense because it spent 8+ hours importing all that data (I imported everything but emumovie). 

My motherboard limits me to 4 GB of memory which seems to be plenty for emulating games, but perhaps not enough to run Launchbox to its fullest, which is a bummer....so my question is this: Windows has a function that allows you to use a flashdrive for additional "RAM."  With 4 GM RAM and another 32GB from the flashdrive, will that be sufficient to run LB?  I won't use "attract mode" which apparently is a huge RAM hog.  However, will I be able to use BigBox as a front end (I plan to upgrade if LB will work), with only some of the bells and whistles? If so, what options can/should I run with only 4GM RAM and some extra help from a flash drive?  What should I disable to help things run smoother?  I'm thinking I'll pick up a cheap refurbished PC on Ebay in the coming weeks or months but I just built a new cabinet and really want to run LB immediately.  Thank you in advance to anyone who actually read this and wishes to help a hapless noob  

Edited August 29, 2019 by Jared

[neil9000]

You can try following the tips in this guide.

At the end of the day though you will be limited by your lack of ram, 4GB really is nothing these days and Windows itself can use more than that, so when you add running programs on top that quickly disapears. Most of the RAM usage used by Launchbox/Bigbox is due to cached images of the games, and obviously the more games you have the more images to cache. You could try using a image type that is a smaller file size like clear logos for example and see if that helps at all.

As for the using a flash drive as temp RAM, i cant speak to that, but USB sticks are not designed for that, they are really for storage of files,not constant read/write of files, so i cant imagine it working well at all. Can't hurt to try though.

[DOS76]

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/faster-than-an-ssd-how-to-turn-extra-memory-into-a-ram-disk

This link suggest you should have 6GB to even attempt setting up a RAM disk and it also states that you need 64 bit Windows as if you are limited to 4GB on a 32 bit system its impossible to add any more.

[Jared]

1 hour ago, DOS76 said:

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/faster-than-an-ssd-how-to-turn-extra-memory-into-a-ram-disk

This link suggest you should have 6GB to even attempt setting up a RAM disk and it also states that you need 64 bit Windows as if you are limited to 4GB on a 32 bit system its impossible to add any more.

Shoot, you're right. I forgot about that...well, it will be functional for the time being with LB turned down using the tips in neil9000s link . I've got another 64 Bit Windows 7 PC I built 5 years ago for my oldest.  He just went off to college with a shiny new gaming laptop so it's been doing next to nothing.  It only has 8 GB of RAM now but can be upgraded to 16GB easily enough. It also has a Haswell G3258 3.2 GHz which can be majorly overclocked if need be and a GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB video card.  It's not a firebreather by any means but it's much better than what I have currently.  Thanks, dudes!