Ok I've got 6gb ram now...what do do with pagefile?

Jfan said:
I recently upgraded to 8gb also, started using xp less and less, so thought i might aswell go all out vista 64

atm ive got a static size page file created after i defragged so its all in one place on my hard drive, but im wondering if it might be worth just getting rid of page file altogether, as i never seem to even use 4gb let alone all 8gb

littlepuppy have you had any issues at all since you got rid of the pagefile?
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Jfan

My PC is 100% stable, the only time I have a crash is if COH throws its toys out the pram (which is rare now) or I decide to play with some BIOS settings to tweak on overclock. I have no bad sectors reported or issues with data loss or programmes not running properly.

Im not sure if I have seen significant performance boost but I like to have it off.

I also run all drives with enhanced write mode cache and even if the pc is unexpectedly turned off I never seem to lose data so I dont know what happens to the cached writes but windows seems to manage it..
 
Guru said:
Who doesn't :)

I'm thinking about making mine a static size.
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In fact I have manually set the minimum and maximum sizes. The minimum big enough so that windows should never need to expand it. It also makes sense to have it on your least busy drive, if you have more than one physical drive.
 
I have 8 gig but dont use anywhere near that much in normal use (games/encoding/convertion/emulation). So I have installed a small 1gb ramdisk and put the pagefile there for those few progras that might depend on a pagefile and keep performance high.

windows (any version) seems too stupid to manage the pagefile correctly using it even when theres plenty of real mem available. The Amiga handled virtual mem in a much more sane way. Esensialy the system sees it as real memory but with a lower priority then chip or fast mem so only called upon when the other mem areas have run out.
 
Guru said:
Who doesn't :)

I'm thinking about making mine a static size. Possibly moving it to my other drive too.
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I don't think you can completely move it in Visa. I know on XP you could move it all to a different drive, but on Vista it must have something on C:\ at all times.
 
i think the best thing is to just make several static sizes across all your drives...that's what I do. 2gb per physical drive
 
bledd. said:
bad advice

you will run into problems
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Windows WILL use a pagefile regardless of how much installed ram.
Anyone who says otherwise are wrong.
Even with normal background (system)activity going on and 8Gig of ram then the pagefile will still be in use.
Windows needs it at all times.
 
Windows isn't stupid. No operating system is. If you have free RAM, Windows will not suddenly decide to extend virtual memory onto the hard drive. Why would it even do that? I don't understand how that notion is even plausible to these people who say "Disable the page file to make your PC use more of the RAM".

If you run out of RAM, it'll extend its virtual memory onto the hard drive. Otherwise it won't.

The page file is *always* needed for paging which occurs no matter now much RAM you have. Operating systems reorganise memory quite frequently, and this sometimes involves paging things out and paging things back in a certain order. If you took away the page file, this cannot happen so you will be reducing the efficiency of your PC.

That is why it is recommended to have 2 or 2.5x your memory size for the page file - to allow enough room for paging and duplication to restructure and reorganise memory.
 
We buy more memory to remove the need for tpageing to disk. The pagefile is legacy from windows 3 where a swap file was useful. Bigger apps needed a little more then the standard 8mb back then. Theres absolutly no reason for huge pagefiles now and deffinatly not a default rule of 2.5 x real memory.

Bout time the pagefile was remade to be something used as last resort when real memory runs out as apposed to a general memory pool the os can move things in and out of as it sees fit .
 
Got 8gb RAM here, plus a 2GB readyboost (as someone else said, it was going to waste) and I leave mine on :) No issues so why mess.
 
musicman53 said:
Windows WILL use a pagefile regardless of how much installed ram.
Anyone who says otherwise are wrong.
Even with normal background (system)activity going on and 8Gig of ram then the pagefile will still be in use.
Windows needs it at all times.
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I agree with the first half of this. Windows will use a pagefile, if enabled, regardless of how much RAM you have. Thus, when I disabled my paging file, a fresh boot into Vista resulted in about 1.5GB RAM being used with the paging file off, and a few hundred MB less being used with the paging file on. This was obviously in spite of large quantities of RAM free - bad handling by the OS.
However, since it can be disabled (and because I first reduced its size to 16MB before disabling it I know it could not possibly have had any functional value even if the OS kept using it), Windows certainly does not need it at all times.

Hatter The Mad said:
Windows isn't stupid. No operating system is. If you have free RAM, Windows will not suddenly decide to extend virtual memory onto the hard drive. Why would it even do that? I don't understand how that notion is even plausible to these people who say "Disable the page file to make your PC use more of the RAM".

If you run out of RAM, it'll extend its virtual memory onto the hard drive. Otherwise it won't.

The page file is *always* needed for paging which occurs no matter now much RAM you have. Operating systems reorganise memory quite frequently, and this sometimes involves paging things out and paging things back in a certain order. If you took away the page file, this cannot happen so you will be reducing the efficiency of your PC.

That is why it is recommended to have 2 or 2.5x your memory size for the page file - to allow enough room for paging and duplication to restructure and reorganise memory.
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It's not important to me why Windows uses the page file when there is free RAM; the simple fact is that it does (see above). One explanation might be that infrequently, or less frequently used memory is shifted to the page file in case the fast RAM is suddenly needed for applications - seems fairly silly, but could be the reason.

I just checked and Windows recommends 1.5x amount of RAM for paging file size. I don't know how it comes to this ratio but I presume they work on the principle that if you have more RAM, you are both likely to have a larger HDD (and therefore not notice a drop in free space so much) and to use more RAM generally (so are more likely to need more paging file).

Also, why on earth would any OS bother restructuring memory in RAM? Not only is the random access time so small that sequential reads have no speed benefit over random reads, but it would just use up I/O bandwidth and therefore reduce performance. One thing OSs do do however is, when idle, shift memory out of RAM and into the page file. However, this is because OSs also perform other functions (such as indexing) when idle, and these require RAM, so has to free some up. Hardly the same thing as reorganising the RAM.

mame said:
Got 8gb RAM here, plus a 2GB readyboost (as someone else said, it was going to waste) and I leave mine on :) No issues so why mess.
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Yes, but then why O/C if it plays games already? To get a few more fps - a boost in performance. Same applies to disabling the paging file - a desire to improve performance.
 
Like it has been said and written about for a long time, Windows was"written"to use virtual ram(HDD space)and it will and does regardless of how much ram you have.
I have had everything from 2Gb to 8Gb and even when not doing anything then windows has always been using some virtual ram.
Windows was meant to be that way.
Sure, installing 8Gb on windows XP/Vista 32 system and disabling Pagefile MAY seem to make things go faster.....
until something makes you run out of ram...then what?
Crash or whatever....
Right now all I have is 2Gb of ram on an overclocked AMD system(2.6GHz upped to 2.8GHz).
Plenty fast enough for my needs and when doing nothing windows xp uses 2-4% of virtual ram.
Most times the max used is no more than 20%.
If I change to 4Gb of ram then Windows will still use the pagefile as and when needed.
A long time ago I tried it without a pagefile and there was no difference in speed of anything.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
You obviously think you understand better, so why not go ahead and do what you want with the page file?
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Thank you. I have, and it works.

musicman53 said:
until something makes you run out of ram...then what?
Crash or whatever....
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And that is why you should leave the page file in place if you're not going to check the amount of free RAM when running lots of apps, and aren't certain it isn't suddenly going to run out of memory and die.
 
In years gone by, everyone recommended a static size, to stop fragmentation; and to place on a different HDD to the OS, so that both could be accessed simultaneously.
 
hey Stu, long time no see

miniyazz, this has been discussed to death

windows needs a pagefile, end of story, if you choose not to use one, then fair enough, but don't pollute the forums with poor advice
 
bledd. said:
hey Stu, long time no see
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I've not had time to surf the forum in recent times. I decided to get back involved a few months ago in preparation for a new build... the last 2 weeks have been spent building the new rig (and enjoying Christmas, of course). Now up and running and going through the hassle of installing software. I was moving my old setup to an old case, but I think that I just fried something... BIOS beeping, smoke from power plug to floppy drive, more beeping :eek::mad:
 
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