How big should I make my pagefile?

[Xektrix]

I've just gotten into the whole PC gaming scene, because I just built my computer a few weeks ago. I've always been a console person, but I really wanted to mod games and have better graphics, so I built it. I've wanted to do it for a long time, just never had the money since I was a kid and didn't have a job lol.

But my issue is that I've been modding Skyrim, pretty heavily. I don't think I have any files that will cause crashing, but every once in a while (like an hour or so) I'll just randomly CTD and it's really annoying. I've been saving a lot, but this one time I went into a dungeon and was literally right at the door to leave and crashed and lost like 45mins of time.

I think it might be because of my pagefile, because I have MSI Afterburner and I check it every once in a while while gaming, and it will pretty much be maxed out most of the time. Sometimes it turns yellow because I guess it's literally reaching max load? Idk. But I watched a video on how to adjust virtual memory, and he said to set the max for about 4GB. Is that a good size, or do I need more? It was at about 1,500MB, but I changed it to the recommended min (1,912MB) and set the max to 4GB. I haven't tested it to see if it makes a difference, but is this a good size? I have 8GB of real DDR3 memory.

 

[wpgwpg]

I always make mine double the amount of RAM I have.

Good luck.

 

[smorizio]

if it a standard hard drive a page file is fine. not for a ssd as a page file with windows does a lot of writes and reads and can wear out a ssd. if you do have a ssd make the page file on the storage drive. also when gaming try turning off this in start up that you dont need to load. (java update...). try to keep as much as the 8g ram free for the games. also as ram is cheap toss in another 8g of ram.

 

[Xektrix]

if it a standard hard drive a page file is fine. not for a ssd as a page file with windows does a lot of writes and reads and can wear out a ssd. if you do have a ssd make the page file on the storage drive. also when gaming try turning off this in start up that you dont need to load. (java update...). try to keep as much as the 8g ram free for the games. also as ram is cheap toss in another 8g of ram.

I'll probably just get another 8GB tbh, why not really. Most people that I've seen say you only need 8GB for gaming, and anything more than that is just unneeded. But is that for modded games, or just vanilla?

 

[smorizio]

with games there two rams that are used a lot the gpu ram and onboard system ram. cut video going to load up and hit the system ram. in game eye candy is gpu ram. a lot of the newer games and 2g gpu people have run out of gpu memory.

 

[Gillerer]

You can let Windows manage the pagefile size automatically. That way if you ever run into a situation where more space is needed, Windows will just enlarge it.

 

[Xektrix]

with games there two rams that are used a lot the gpu ram and onboard system ram. cut video going to load up and hit the system ram. in game eye candy is gpu ram. a lot of the newer games and 2g gpu people have run out of gpu memory.

My graphics card is 4GB, but could that be the problem? Does adjusting the pagefile work for both type of ram, or just system ram?

 

[Xektrix]

You can let Windows manage the pagefile size automatically. That way if you ever run into a situation where more space is needed, Windows will just enlarge it.

That's how it is by default right? Well that wasn't working, it was just maxing out the pagefile after a while of gaming.

 

[Gillerer]

What does "maxing out" mean? Did it consume all the space on the drive? Or do you mean that all of the pagefile was in use?

MSI Afterburner's "Pagefile usage" is actually not pagefile usage - it's actually "Commit charge"...

From Wikipedia's definition of "Commit charge" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commit_charge):

In computing, commit charge is a term used in Microsoft Windows operating systems to describe the total amount of pageable virtual address space for which no backing store is assigned other than the pagefile. On systems with a pagefile, it may be thought of as the maximum potential pagefile usage. On systems with no pagefile, it is still counted, but all such virtual address space must remain in physical memory (RAM) at all times.

So usage of physical RAM will affect the reading - pagefile may not necessarily have that much data.

If you want to approximate the actual pagefile usage, subtract Afterburner's "RAM usage" from "Pagefile usage". (Some data may be present in both RAM and pagefile, though.)