Authoring Tools memory consumption
That took some time for you to change it xD. I think my page file takes around a 1/6 of my terrabyte drive. 
Not like I need all of it though...
The so-called recommendation is 1,5*RAM, so it's pretty unbalanced now. I don't think it does matter since my memory usage normally doesn't go over RAM to the pagefile, Hammer is an exception.
I'm having a similar problem. Well 2 problems actually. Only it's immediately when I load up a map after starting hammer. The camera wsad movement is choppy and incredibly annoying, and the memory usage goes up every time I open and close a map, even the same map though it does it with every map I have. When it starts to hog about 1.5G of my RAM, I usually restart it, but the camera is still always jerky. What gets me is that, I have 4G of ram. SDK's hammer runs fine, and so does alien swarm's, and L4D2's hammer just like JakeeeD said. It's only in Portal 2 Authoring Tools that hammer seems to keep hogging my memory. It's like it never frees up memory on map file close, which is okay for the model browser but really, I mean come on!
I just don't get it, it didn't do this a couple months ago when the P2AT first came out.
Edit: Oh, and I just tested the old right click drag camera movement and it's jerky too. Its seems to want to move the camera a minimum of like 128 units or so. It's almost worth it just to map it in SDK and port it over.
As previously stated in this thread:
1) Upgrade RAM / pagefile.
2) Consider better GFX card.
3) Lower these settings:
PortalStories.com
"Oh, in case you got covered in that repulsion gel, here's some advice the lab boys gave me: DO NOT get covered in the repulsion gel."
It's very wonderful to work with this setup.
To me.
If portal 2 sdk is giving you problems: why don't you map your portal 2 maps in the alien swarm sdk?
If portal 2 sdk is giving you problems: why don't you map your portal 2 maps in the alien swarm sdk?
I recommend that, as I got everything fully working today, it's really more fun to map with bigger draw distance than 200 ; >
Im not using virtual memory since 1998
I always had enough ram for the actual windows and progs to handle it. 6 year ago 2GB was enough, till 2 year ago 4 was enough, and I upgraded to 8GB 1 year ago and it will be far enough for everything, all game and editing and such, and preserves HDDs.