Question About Virtual Memory

[jimnaix]

Hello, i'm new to the subject (VM) but i have a question, i've seen that if u manually set VM it will kinda boost your performance. I have 16gb and i've also seen that i don't really need it (since it wont slow down your performance by running the page file on the hdd(I dont have ssd). I'm a gamer so i run "heavy" games constantly while maintining my browser up so i'm like using 50-60% ,or on some occasions more, of my ram constantly. What do you think i should do?

 

[kanewolf]

Windows "likes" to have a pagefile. It is kind of a security blanket. If you actually start to use the pagefile, your performance drops significantly, but your computer won't crash from an out-of-memory condition. If it was me, I would probably do a fixed size of 1X your RAM. That is the safe approach. It wastes some disk space, but 16GB is usually in the noise. If you have HDD and SSD, it will want to have the pagefile on your C: drive by default. Make a fixed size pagefile on your HDD then you can delete the page file from the SSD.

 

[geofelt]

If you do not use a page file, the only drawback of having one is the miniscule amount of HDD/SSD space it takes.
If windows ever gets overloaded on ram contents, the page file may be the only way to fix the condition cleanly.

I see no gaming performance by eliminating it

And, this has no connection to Virtual memory or Virtual machines which are what VM usually refers to.

Games used to be built on a 32 bit basis which limited the amount of virtual memory available to 2gb or possibly 3gb max.
Many still do. Newer games may require a 64 bit os to increase the virtual memory available to a game
to a higher number. I doubt, though that you will find any game that requires a full 16gb to be mapped to the games working set.
If you do, the game will require a page file to handle the overflow.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Let Windows decide on size virtual memory buffer - - that means allowing Windows you use all the available free space as and when required.

Don't disable virtual memory - - that's pointless. If Windows doesn't need it, it won't be used anyway, but you have to make it available for those times when it is is needed - - - otherwise you'll get low memory warnings and you'll have to enable it anyway - - so no point disabling it in the first place -

 

[das_stig]

A 4GB min/max static pagefile is a decent size for a 16GB system, performs better than letting windows constantly monitor and change the size.

VM's are different kettle of fish, as you have to set how much main memory you giving the hosted O/S, which in turn will create it's own pagefile.

 

[jimnaix]

Thank you very much everyone!