There's actually a differences in committed virtual memory, and cached virtual memory. Committed memory is actually acting as slow RAM via the HDD. This is how I can do a render like right now that would be using well over my 8GB, but windows manages it nicely, and much of that object memory is held in committed RAM. In fact around 10GB of it as committed since around 500mb-1gb when not running anything. All that's going is this browser with this page which is only using 9.47mb ontop of firefox's 628mb for itself. And of course Windows chunk of 0.5-1gb RAM.
Some programs can lock memory, at least I've seen it before where entering a desired amount of RAM will take up that much and while the application is running, anything trying to pull over that runs like crap due to virtual memory, and what RAM is available. But doesn't crash.
In any case, without the virtual ram (I don't use ReadyBoost on this computer due to 7200rpm HDD) TG crashes when doing full resolution renders with lots of objects. I'll wake up and there will just be no TG open. Since I followed tutorials on windows performance for artists and people rendering movies (wasn't focused on rendering) I have none, zero crashes. None. The only crashes come in the GUI's bugs. Random crashes swapping node inputs, or what not.
Maybe windows 10's memory complex handles things better than you're familiar with. As I've never done this on other OSs except back on like Windows 98. lol
Like I mentioned too, unless virtual memory is disabled, windows will give you an "Out of Virtual Memory" error when RAM and Virtual Memory is full, not a "Out of Physical Memory" error, which you'd get with no virtual memory, or is RAM is locked up to ramdisk or application that does so.