How much virtual memory [Paging file] to set?

[ivkeboss]

Hi everyone, i have 8GB of ram, and 1 hard drive with 2 partitions[C and D]. System is on C, and all games are on D. Now i'm wondering on which partition and how much virtual memory should i add for best performance?

 

[neieus]

Assuming you are not using an SSD I would just let windows mange it. Unlike previous versions of windows versions from Win 7 and higher better utilizes the page file. Now if you have an SSD and 16GB of RAM you could eliminate the page file altogether or at least create a small one on one of your secondary drives.

 

[ivkeboss]

Someone told me to put Amount of RAM *1.5 on system partition, so in my case that is 12288. So what is better for performance, to do that, or still to let my windows manage it ?

edit: I've also heard people saying that if you have 8 GB RAM or more, its best to disable page file, so im kinda confused now what is absolutely best for performance since im into gaming. ?

 

[neieus]

*1.5 is the static setting used by Windows and it's normally what's used by people that want to keep the page file from shrinking and expanding causing disk fragmentation but as mentioned before Windows 7 and higher better utilizes the page file so there's no real need to set it at a static size. However if you are really insistent to set it then keep in mind that the a large page file is really only needed if you plan on capturing a full memory dump but in most cases a mini dump is more than adequate. I suggest setting the page file to be equal to your ram plus 200 MB if you really feel the need to set it to something but 1.5 is overkill these days IMO.

 

[edogawa]

I have mine set to zero since I have 16GB+ of memory and don't care about memory dumps, but since you have 8GB of memory go with 1GB, maybe 2GB if you want, of paging file. It's not something you need to worry about too much, it really isn't.

 

[jagmint]

I feel its best to let windows decide the size of the paging file. Just click the box which says 'let window manage automatically...".

 

[johnbl]

Windows is a paging operating system, if you set the pagefile to zero, it will set aside some of your RAM and use that to page to.
I set mine to be about 1.5 the size of my RAM but most of the time 4 GB that is allowed to expand would be plenty.
I think if you set it below 100 mb you block some of the crash dump features and certain apps may fail.

when I first got a SSD I ran windows 7 for about a year without having a pagefile, never had a problem. Now I have a Larger SSD and am running windows 10 with the default settings. Never really notice any difference in day to day normal operations.