if i play 3D games, maybe the nvidia will be used?

No, it wont unless one of the ways to force the nVidia GPU work.

in this case i wasted my money???

Presumably you intend to keep the computer for a while?

Probably.

*thinks*

Yes.

i am using windows 7 ultimate 64bit,
it will not use nvidia?

Yeah, windows 7 will use optimus. Well, most versions will anyway, 'windows 7 starter' will not use optimus (I'm unsure about win7 home basic and optimus)

That doesnt make it any better for using linux though.

So, only linux has problem of using optimus?
I believe future version of linux distro will consider using optimus. Maybe?

Not just linux has problems with optimus, all the open source and unix like OSes have the same problem. Windows vista and earlier have no optimus suport, and I'm unsure about MacOSX.

nVidia has no plans to support optimus with linux. As usual, its all 'up to the community'.

If nVidia supported optimus with linux, it would be working (or very close to working) now. Since nVidia wont support it, if the communtiy cant make it work somehow then optimus will not work on linux.

in this case it is better to buy ATI Radeon VGA-notebook.

In a system using an i3-2100 CPU and an H67 chipset there is a possibility of 16 GB of RAM (2X8 GB). I plan on a minimum of 4 GB of RAM (2x2 GB)

The system also has an SSD for the OS and application software. With an linux OS (Say Shareware 64 bit) Swap space along with areas for other software is designated when the drive is partitioned. How do I assign swap to RAM memory? How much should I add to the 4 GB already planed, and is this a faster system then putting swap on the SSD?

I assume this is an appropriate question for this thread, and I thank all for there response.

T L
On the Wet Coast

Probably, though switchable graphics has its own porblems. IMO you are best off getting a laptop with 1 video card only.

I would have started a new thread over posting in a thread made for a very different topic.

4GB is the max I would put into a i3. i3s are just dual core, anything task or set of tasks that would use more than 4GB would be better with a few more cores, and faster cores or more cache.

I think you mean 'slackware', not 'shareware'.

You dont need to do anything as far as swap is concerned. The OS knows about it and will use it.

Swap should be a bit bigger than RAM size, if you want to be able to suspend/hibernate with all that RAM in use. If you dont use suspend/hibernate and never use swap, then you can actually get away with no swap at all.

Running swap on a SSD is possible, but I wouldnt do it myself unless it was the only drive (and in that case I personally would just have no swap partition).

Certainly not. But since you already got one answer, I don't think another adds to the harm. Next time start a new thread for a new topic.

Your question was very unclear.

I think you are asking about a system with no hard drive, just SSD. Is that correct?

I think you are asking about using some of your ram as swap. That is almost certainly a bad idea.

With 4GB of ram and no hard drive (just SSD) the normal (and almost certainly correct) choice would be to have no swap space.

I don't know how you intend to use the system, so I can't guess whether 4GB with no swap is enough.

If 4GB with no swap is too slow (or fails entirely because you run something too big) having swap in SSD would be a very poor approach. Having more ram would be appropriate, but you would just use the additional ram as ram, not as swap.

Under memory pressure, Linux removes pages from ram.

It first removes read only pages that haven't been used recently (typically sections of programs and shared libraries). Those are not written to swap when removed. They are simply dropped from ram. Later when/if those pages are needed again, they are reread from the original media.

If all read only pages are recently accessed and if swap space is available, Linux will copy "anonymous" pages to swap. With a hard drive, it costs twice as much (write and read back later) to drop an anonymous page vs. a read only page (just read back later). So Linux only drops anonymous pages when they are much less recently used than read only pages. With SSD, a write costs much more than a read, so the relative cost of dropping anonymous pages is much more than the usual two to one. In most modern systems all your anonymous pages could stay in ram at the cost of rereading the read only pages more often. With no hard drive, that is usually the best way to manage the resources.

Thank you for the thoughtful and through answers, they are helpful to my understanding the mechanics of software.

Please excuse my apparent thread steeling. However, in my limited understanding of the subject, I did not see that the second part of the original question was addressed. From the way it seems to be written, the_gripmaster (The original post)had or was planning a second 4 GB of RAM as designated swap. I did not understand how this was possible. I assume from the response that it is not possible, and that the 4 GB of RAM will be used as RAM with a 64 bit OS. A additional 4 GB if not RAM will be used as swap if designated for this use, and this is better if it is not from an SSD, and may not even be necessary, depending on the applications being run.

T L
on the Wet Coast
80 Deg. and Full Sun

Now I see the connection between your misunderstanding of the initial question and your follow-up question, so it wouldn't be clear to you that you were jumping to a new topic. Obviously we don't demand you start a new thread when you don't know you're changing the topic.

the_gripmaster meant 4GB of ram combined with 4GB swap space on a hard drive, not 4GB of swap in ram. The original question was whether the total of ram plus swap was subject to some 4GB limit in 32 bit. I thought that was clearly answered "no". Even without PAE, 32 bit Linux can use 3 point something GB of ram plus 4GB of swap. No single process could use over 3GB, but a combination of processes could have anonymous memory filling all the 4GB of swap plus most of the 3 point something GB of ram. (Counting non anonymous memory, multiple processes on that system could be using far more than the total 8GB of "memory").

Have I cleared that up? Or you still need clarification?

That is a rather strained misreading of the post. Anyway, that is not what it said.

I don't think any response implied using extra ram as swap is not possible. In fact, it is possible. It is generally a terrible idea, but it is still possible to do.

Having swap on SSD is another generally bad idea. If you don't have a hard drive, having no swap is likely better than having swap in SSD or ram.

Whether you are talking about a 32 bit OS or a 64 bit OS, whether you are talking about 4GB total ram or 8GB total ram, the generally best use of all your ram is as ordinary ram.

I'm sure some expert could point out some obscure situation in which swap on SSD or swap in ram is a good idea. Linux is flexible enough to be fit into some very unusual situations. But swap on SSD or ram is further from an ordinary system than it may appear. An ordinary system without a hard drive should not have swap.