Page File, How BIG????

[Freak_c]

Was just wondering how big should the page file be and do you need it, if you have enough RAM?

My page file is 768mb in size as when i installed Windows I only had 512mb of Ram. Can i turn it off??

My system is:
AMD Athlon 64 3200
2x1gig DDR 400 2x512mb DDR 400
120 gig SATA 2 HDD
Windows XP Pro SP2

 

[pscowboy]

You can turn it off now with all that ram.

 

[cripp]

It's best to set the page file in a fixed number that is 1.5 times your RAM amount

 

[pscowboy]

Not so!

Everyone should read this article - and we're not talking about servers:

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

 

[etomasula]

OK guys, this will be a debate for time to come. Here is my 2 cents.

The pagefile, while not necessary with over 512MB of RAM on certain XP machines, increases system stabilty. Think about it if you are running a demanding game, it is gonna chew up your RAM and you will definately get a BSOD. Just try it and you will find out. Also the way windows uses the pagfile will increase system performance. It puts only seldom used data or rarely used system data into it. Setting the page file is your preference. Yes we are not talking about a server. Some webservers I run at work have the pagefile set to over 10GB. The general rule of thumb should be 1.5 times your RAM. You should also configure it to a set size to reduce fragmentation. I.E. for you set it to 768 to 768. Setting the Pagefile to another drive or even partition seperated from the windows installation partition is known to increase performance. Damn, can't I type a short reply. :roll:

 

[Zoron]

Putting it on a different partition on the same drive does almost nothing for performance. The only way to increase performance is to move the file to a separate drive altogether.

 

[Freak_c]

OK guys, this will be a debate for time to come. Here is my 2 cents.

The pagefile, while not necessary with over 512MB of RAM on certain XP machines, increases system stabilty. Think about it if you are running a demanding game, it is gonna chew up your RAM and you will definately get a BSOD. Just try it and you will find out. Also the way windows uses the pagfile will increase system performance. It puts only seldom used data or rarely used system data into it. Setting the page file is your preference. Yes we are not talking about a server. Some webservers I run at work have the pagefile set to over 10GB. The general rule of thumb should be 1.5 times your RAM. You should also configure it to a set size to reduce fragmentation. I.E. for you set it to 768 to 768. Setting the Pagefile to another drive or even partition seperated from the windows installation partition is known to increase performance. Damn, can't I type a short reply. :roll:

Why 768? If you say 1.5 times the size of your ram, shouldn't i have it set to 4500 gig as i have 3gig of Ram. Currently i have it set to 1gig to 2 gig?

 

[heartview]

You can turn it off now with all that ram.

Do not follow this advice. If Windows runs out of memory and you do not have a swap file set up you will crash the OS. Always have a swap file set up and it should typically be 1.5 to 2 times the amount of physical memory you have installed. If you have tons of disk space, set the size of your swap file to some small amount, defrag completely, then set the swap file size to maximum (and then don't worry about it again).

As the old adage goes, better to have and not need than need and not have.

 

[etomasula]

I was thinking you had 512MB. Your correct by setting it to 4500MB if you have 3GB of RAM

 

[heartview]

I was thinking you had 512MB. Your correct by setting it to 4500MB if you have 3GB of RAM

Except that XP won't let you set it higher than ~4GB, which is fine.

 

[etomasula]

I was thinking you had 512MB. Your correct by setting it to 4500MB if you have 3GB of RAM

Except that XP won't let you set it higher than ~4GB, which is fine.

Huh, didn't know that. I guess it is in the way it handles memory addressing. . .

 

[Freak_c]

Just to let everyone know that I have set it to 1000MB (1Gig) and a max of 2000mb (2gig).

So far no worries or hassles. I am due for a format soon, (I always like to start clean from time to time) and seeing as I have done so Hardware mods I think a format will let windows set it self for that hardware.

Remember we have to tell windows what we want and what to do!

 

[edklite]

you should have turned the page file as pscowbody had advised. if you have more then 1GB of ram you don't need page file and your pc will run much faster 😉

@HeartView you are way off and wrong, in 4 years with a p4 2.0 and 1Gb of ram there has been no problems, your advice is one of a person who is just repeating and not speaking from actual experience if it was then you would never say that.

 

[heartview]

Then you obviously do not run multiple applications.

 

[edklite]

actually I'm a software tester and run multiple apps, obviously you have no idea what you are talking about.

if running fah (folding@home) encoding media, opera with 40 tabs open, anti virus, firewall, spysweeper plus the apps I'm testing at the time don't count as multiple applications then I don't know what does, shoot, fah alone is a heavy process on its own.

stop giving people old advise

oh

I forgot ftp and p2p usage also.

 

[Anoobis]

Open up a large texture in Photoshop.

 

[edklite]

what this is not enough for ya




if not then here is your texture 2848 x 2136

 

[heartview]

But you're hardly using any memory. You have nearly 500 MB free with your "many apps" open. My development language alone can eat up 350 MB or more of memory. Point is you are NOT using memory even close to your 1GB limit so of course you aren't running into any problems.

 

[edklite]

well if my p2p, my CPU is at 100% in the pic, I got photo shop with the huge texture open, opera open, paint open, fah open, plus the normal apps like anti virus, firewall anti spyware and etc.

that is more then any normal user would have running, so I'm not sure what you want me to do here but the PC is not crashing and I'm not running out memory. 😉

what language development software? tell me so I can run that for you also, nothing is gonna make you happy anyways apparently facts don't play any part, but I got time so I'll play your game so what you got?

Python?VB? what?

 

[Zoron]

Taken from XP Myths:

Myth - "Disabling the Paging File improves performance."

Reality - "You gain no performance improvement by turning off the Paging File. When certain applications start, they allocate a huge amount of memory (hundreds of megabytes typically set aside in virtual memory) even though they might not use it. If no paging file (pagefile.sys) is present, a memory-hogging application can quickly use a large chunk of RAM. Even worse, just a few such programs can bring a machine loaded with memory to a halt. Some applications (e.g., Adobe Photoshop) will display warnings on startup if no paging file is present." - Source

"In modern operating systems, including Windows, application programs and many system processes always reference memory using virtual memory addresses which are automatically translated to real (RAM) addresses by the hardware. Only core parts of the operating system kernel bypass this address translation and use real memory addresses directly. All processes (e.g. application executables) running under 32 bit Windows gets virtual memory addresses (a Virtual Address Space) going from 0 to 4,294,967,295 (2*32-1 = 4 GB), no matter how much RAM is actually installed on the computer. In the default Windows OS configuration, 2 GB of this virtual address space are designated for each process' private use and the other 2 GB are shared between all processes and the operating system. RAM is a limited resource, whereas virtual memory is, for most practical purposes, unlimited. There can be a large number of processes each with its own 2 GB of private virtual address space. When the memory in use by all the existing processes exceeds the amount of RAM available, the operating system will move pages (4 KB pieces) of one or more virtual address spaces to the computer's hard disk, thus freeing that RAM frame for other uses. In Windows systems, these "paged out" pages are stored in one or more files called pagefile.sys in the root of a partition. Virtual Memory is always in use, even when the memory required by all running processes does not exceed the amount of RAM installed on the system."

 

[edklite]

its not a myth, do it and see for yourself, writing to straight to ram instead of to hdd then to ram is faster.

any body can figure that out

but don't take my word for it, do it yourself, use your pc with page file disabled for a week then enable it again and if your pc does not seems like a turtule to you then come back and I will change my name to what ever you like.

I already know about that out dated quote from ms 😉

 

[heartview]

A few points of interest in this discussion:

* Applications will frequently allocate more memory than they actually use. Without a pagefile set up this allocated memory takes up physical RAM even though it is not used by the application.
* Applications will frequently use dynamic link libraries (DLLs) but may only access a few functions within them. The ENTIRE DLL is loaded into memory regardless of how many functions are used. With a page file set up the unused portion gets moved to the swap file.
* Windows creates a temporary swap file even if you choose to disable the swap file. There is no way around this.
* If the paging file is disabled and an application needs more memory than the available physical memory then Windows will crash.
* Some applications (especially those that work with large files) can require the use of a paging file and may not work without one. Adobe's Photoshop is an often used example here.
* If you are using close to your maximum amount of RAM without a page file set up then your system will actually be SLOWER because less memory will be available for disk caching.

Performance over time will always be better with the paging file in place. Initial performance (start up time and application load time) can be faster without a paging file, but at the cost of wasting memory that could be used for other purposes, such as disk cache.

 

[edklite]

your theories are nice and true but in reality the PC never reaches that point of running of ram as my own 3 PCs and hundreds of others plus my friends and family that enjoy no page file with no crashing.

as I said before stop the theories and do it yourself and speak from experience, you guys can talk all you want but at the end of the day in in reality the PC never runs out of ram then you guys are just blowing hot smoke 😉

I just posted a pick of painshop opening a 2848 x 2136 pixels pick

if not then here is your texture 2848 x 2136

and you cried about how I was not no where near my memory.

with page file disabled you never get near maximum unless you are trying to go out of your way in which case page file does not matter, if you are trying to crash PC you can do so easily, open 20 programs at the same time along the line you will crash.

are you guys too busy forcing your theories on people that you are avoiding the facts that I'm posting? or does my pick of paintshop with that big of a file does not count for magical reasons?

if you want I can install photoshop and do the same thing as corel's paintshop.

I have seen no perfomance drop at all nor has anybody else reported any drop in performance or any crahes or etc. 😉

 

[heartview]

First off, Paintshop is not Photoshop by a long stretch. Secondly, that file is NOT big, especially compared to high resolution scans used for making display backdrops and such, the sort of thing professionals use Photoshop for.

You are right, if you never run out of RAM then this whole discussion is a moot point. But that is exactly the situation I run into every day at work with 1 GB of RAM on my computer.

Just today, for instance, I have Crystal Reports, FrontPage, Outlook, Firefox, SQL Server Enterprise Manager, and Delphi 2006 (all personalities) open right now. There are at least a half dozen more applications I could need to open on a moments notice (I do support as well as development). No virtual memory means a dead computer for me.

If you don't need it, that's great, go on with your bad self. But please do not spread statements around that it is not needed at all with 1 GB of RAM, because that is just plain wrong. It depends on what you do and which applications you run.

 

[edklite]

first off the regular user does not run sql on their PC, second for the love of god if you gonna use all those then get your self another gig.

third I never told anybody to disable page file at work.

forth, what resolution is big enough for you if a 2848 x 2136 is not enough for you?

last, I'm gonna get photoshop right now, give me a link for pick that is big enough for you.

BTW your statements are plain wrong and you know damn well since you are comparing your work PC with people's personal PC to whom I'm recommending to disable page file.

also my work PC I have 2, one c2d with 2GB of ram and another p4 with 4GB of ram and thats right the page file is disabled on those also and run more apps then you named at a time at work 😉

so how about you don't advise people based on your isolated work experience and instead advise them on their environment 😉