[SOLVED] Virtual Memory

[Anonymous_Unknown]

I have 32 GB ram @ 3600 mhz (2x16) on Samsung Evo Plus 970 2TB (SSD). How much should I set the virtual memory for?

I am very confusing about it.

 

[Nemesia]

Are you talking about Windows Virtual memory / pagefile? You leave it at auto managed by the system.

 

[SamirD]

Are you talking about Windows Virtual memory / pagefile? You leave it at auto managed by the system.

You can do this or set it for a fixed value of 32GB minimum and 32GB maximum. This was a trick we used back in the old days to give the system a permanent fixed size swap file.

 

[Nemesia]

You can do this or set it for a fixed value of 32GB minimum and 32GB maximum. This was a trick we used back in the old days to give the system a permanent fixed size swap file.

In the old days. You said it. Nowadays you do not need to do this anymore. We have enough RAM to let Windows take care of it without having an issue. Back in the days you had no choice in some situations. In 2021 you do not touch this option unless you want to change the pagefile location to put it on another drive.

This is the equivalent of installing your drivers manually through device manager only. No need to do it like that anymore.

 

[iTRiP]

Haha, right..computing has come a long way hasn't it. System managed...Set, Restart and compute in peace.

 

[SamirD]

In the old days. You said it. Nowadays you do not need to do this anymore. We have enough RAM to let Windows take care of it without having an issue. Back in the days you had no choice in some situations. In 2021 you do not touch this option unless you want to change the pagefile location to put it on another drive.

This is the equivalent of installing your drivers manually through device manager only. No need to do it like that anymore.

That is incorrect. I was having some issues with a piece of software and I was able to fix it by setting up a permanent swap file. Now, granted this software is designed to 'snapshot' the system and make it the same each boot like a toaster, but the swap file constantly changing was messing it up after a memory upgrade.

It still helps to have a contiguous permanent swap file. Because drives are faster (especially with ssds) you may not notice the difference, but that doesn't mean it's there.

And you still do have to install drivers manually--lots of threads on here where people have had to do this for video and network cards, even motherboards.

Bottom line is to know how things work and adjust accordingly. If you really want to tweak a system, understand how the system works in theory and then act accordingly. The theory on swap files hasn't changed, so all the old tweaks still work.

 

[SamirD]

Haha, right..computing has come a long way hasn't it. System managed...Set, Restart and compute in peace.

Yep until an update comes along and breaks it, lol.

 

[iTRiP]

Hopefully not, but then again we'll find other way for it to work....

 

[SamirD]

Hopefully not, but then again we'll find other way for it to work....

Like adjusting the swap file or installing drivers--LOL!!

It's sad that a lot of times the system gets so borked that the only solution is a complete reinstall--it's a waste. 🙁

 

[iTRiP]

Like adjusting the swap file or installing drivers--LOL!!

It's sad that a lot of times the system gets so borked that the only solution is a complete reinstall--it's a waste. 🙁

Well keeps having fun installing OS, finding new ways to circumvent error made by poor programing...merely computing along...

 

[SamirD]

Well keeps having fun installing OS, finding new ways to circumvent error made by poor programing...merely computing along...

Yep, qc in programming is next to nothing these days. And computers and devices are strategically planned for obsolescence to make companies and people in power money...easy to rig the deck when you make the cards...😉

 

[Nemesia]

That is incorrect. I was having some issues with a piece of software and I was able to fix it by setting up a permanent swap file. Now, granted this software is designed to 'snapshot' the system and make it the same each boot like a toaster, but the swap file constantly changing was messing it up after a memory upgrade.

It still helps to have a contiguous permanent swap file. Because drives are faster (especially with ssds) you may not notice the difference, but that doesn't mean it's there.

And you still do have to install drivers manually--lots of threads on here where people have had to do this for video and network cards, even motherboards.

Bottom line is to know how things work and adjust accordingly. If you really want to tweak a system, understand how the system works in theory and then act accordingly. The theory on swap files hasn't changed, so all the old tweaks still work.

There is a difference between "not having to do this anymore" and "doing it when you have no choices".

There are far more threads about people NOT using the "Let Windows manage it" option than the opposite. I can't remember the last time I saw someone say "That fixed it by setting a page file size and location manually instead of using auto".

Installing drivers manually is again if you have no choices. Most drivers comes in an installation package now and only a few will make you extract an inf file and make you use device manager. Like I said this isn't 1995 anymore. Back in the days you had to do this for every device with a ! in device manager and there were a lot of them. Now you install the Chipset drivers and the GPU drivers and everything works perfectly except a few exception where the board network card isn't installed after a new OS install which is very very rare.

Nowadays the amount of people that needs to do any of this is almost non existent. We see a thread like that once in a month.

For 99.99% of the people this is irrelevant.

I'm not saying you can't go in your page file settings and change the location and the size when you know what you're doing. The casual user won't do that.

 

[SamirD]

There is a difference between "not having to do this anymore" and "doing it when you have no choices".

There are far more threads about people NOT using the "Let Windows manage it" option than the opposite. I can't remember the last time I saw someone say "That fixed it by setting a page file size and location manually instead of using auto".

Installing drivers manually is again if you have no choices. Most drivers comes in an installation package now and only a few will make you extract an inf file and make you use device manager. Like I said this isn't 1995 anymore. Back in the days you had to do this for every device with a ! in device manager and there were a lot of them. Now you install the Chipset drivers and the GPU drivers and everything works perfectly.

Nowadays the amount of people that needs to do any of this is almost non existent. We see a thread like that once in a month.

For 99.99% of the people this is irrelevant.

The problem is that windows management of a swap file was terrible from day one--and like the word wrap bug in notepad that stuck around forever, they never really changed the swap file either. I didn't think it was an issue until I started messing with it again. It's why there's a permanent swap file in any of the IOT or embedded versions of windows even though those machines typically have an ssd as well.

You actually didn't have to do it back then either--you bought more ram or paid someone else to fix it. Or you learned how things worked and tweaked it yourself.

There were actually less drivers back in the day as drivers were just a bandaid when stuff wasn't talking to each other at the hardware level. Now there's a software layer in between that everything and their mother has to have a driver for. It's kinda retarded to have a chipset driver as the chipset is going to do its (core) job with or without a driver.

Most people are stupid when it comes to computers, so this is no surprise. All the lemmings jumped off a cliff too, but I've got brains so I'm going to use them.

 

[shavais]

What about the goal of minimizing writes to an SSD in order to lengthen it's useful lifespan?
Isn't that why some people advise us to move the pagefile off the C: drive (if it is an SSD) to an HDD?
But what if you don't have an HDD?
I guess in that case the advice would be to try turning paging off, and if that's too slow, then set the pagefile to a fixed size.

 

[hotaru.hino]

What about the goal of minimizing writes to an SSD in order to lengthen it's useful lifespan?
Isn't that why some people advise us to move the pagefile off the C: drive (if it is an SSD) to an HDD?
But what if you don't have an HDD?
I guess in that case the advice would be to try turning paging off, and if that's too slow, then set the pagefile to a fixed size.

From https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/e7/support-and-qa-for-solid-state-drives

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?
Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

• Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
• Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
• Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.

I've been using SSDs as my OS drive and kept the page file on the SSD for at least 7 years now. I've averaged around 2-3TBW per year, and given that most highly recommended SSDs still have a wear rating of at least ~100 TBW, I think I'm going to toss any SSD long before the flash wears out.

Also never turn off the page file. The problem is that apps will get more memory allocated to them than they actually requested, but those unused portions are marked as reserved in case the app makes another allocation request. If you remove the page file, Windows has no where to put the unused reserved chunks of memory (which costs nothing, the OS just updates a table that maps memory locations since there's nothing to copy). So you end up with programs complaining there's no more memory despite looking like there's free space.

 

[SamirD]

What about the goal of minimizing writes to an SSD in order to lengthen it's useful lifespan?

If you're worrying about wearing out an ssd because of virtual memory usage, you need more physical memory because you shouldn't be swapping that much (even though windows will swap everything to a swap file if you let it).

 

[USAFRet]

What about the goal of minimizing writes to an SSD in order to lengthen it's useful lifespan?
Isn't that why some people advise us to move the pagefile off the C: drive (if it is an SSD) to an HDD?
But what if you don't have an HDD?
I guess in that case the advice would be to try turning paging off, and if that's too slow, then set the pagefile to a fixed size.

My system is SSD only. Indeed, (almost) ALL my house systems are SSD only.
Guess where the pagefiles live?

People that tell you to move the pagefile off to an HDD to preserve SSD lifespan are simply spouting decade old nonsense.
Given sufficient RAM, the pagefile is rarely used. Not never, but rarely.

It impacts the lifespan of an SSD not at all.

 

[Bob.B]

I have 32 GB ram @ 3600 mhz (2x16) on Samsung Evo Plus 970 2TB (SSD). How much should I set the virtual memory for?

I am very confusing about it.

A little late to the party.......I suspect this may be a user specific thing.
Google will give you any kind of answer you want or don't.
I've been running without a page file for years.
I've tested with and without and could not see a diff so I turned it off.
Turn it off and test if something comes up busted turn it on.

 

[Colif]

I have 32 GB ram @ 3600 mhz (2x16) on Samsung Evo Plus 970 2TB (SSD). How much should I set the virtual memory for?

I am very confusing about it.

win 10 should have just set it to 4gb. If you never use all of your ram, it will never use a page file.
I have 32gb and was expecting it to be some crazy amount but it doesn't do that

just leave it as is, it won't use it often but its handy to have a page file in case you ever get any BSOD. Without a Page File, it can't create the dump files.

notices thread is from Feb... op hasn't replied in 2 months (almost)

 

[SamirD]

I generally go off the old rule that always worked for system speed on 3.1 and the 9x series--make a permanent swap file the same size as your physical memory. (Select custom size and min and max to 32GB.) Seems to have worked well on all my systems getting rid of any 'swapping' lag and allowing me to still hit max memory usage.