Benefits of 8GB over 4GB

elpedro

elpedro

elpedro

Associate
Joined
7 Feb 2008
Posts
1,196
Location
Surrey
Well I have just sold my 4x1GB Dominator XMS2 modules (1066) and replaced them with 2x2GB regular Corsiar XMS2. Should I go ahead and add another 4 gigs? I mainly play games, occaisional Photoshop and little video editing. Running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 atm.
 
Cheers guys, I'll save my cash in that case. I didn't think it would help much, tbh, I only found minimal benefits going from 2GB to 4GB on Vista anyway.
 
Umm, I've found it's a big difference, I usually can quite easily peak at 6GB RAM usage.

Going from 2GB to 4GB made a big difference to me as well.

I recently went back to 32 Bit windows for a while and I found only having 3-4GB of RAM made windows feel really sluggish.

I also have my pagefile turned off too and it's made windows feel snappier still.

I would say it's definitely worth it, when I get myself an I7 set up I'll be looking at going for more than 8GB.
 
bledd. said:
everyone will agree with me tbh
Click to expand...

What a comment.

I do not agree with you, system managed is not the answer. A system with 4gb of ram does not need the amount of swap windows requests. There are a few (some would say badly written) programs that will refuse to install/run if there is no page file. So give them 128mb or so if you're worried about this.

This may have been removed with vista, even better odds its been removed with windows 7. A hangover from the days of bugger all system ram which is no longer relavent.

Linux objects if you use no swap file, but it runs excellently without one nonetheless. I don't often use a page file on windows, and it crashes no more often without one than with one.


(well, assuming you care about wasting resources and/or running a clean/elegant system. If you just don't care, then go ahead and give windows loads of hard drive space for it to leave idle)
 
JonJ678 said:
What a comment.

I do not agree with you, system managed is not the answer. A system with 4gb of ram does not need the amount of swap windows requests. There are a few (some would say badly written) programs that will refuse to install/run if there is no page file. So give them 128mb or so if you're worried about this.

This may have been removed with vista, even better odds its been removed with windows 7. A hangover from the days of bugger all system ram which is no longer relavent.

Linux objects if you use no swap file, but it runs excellently without one nonetheless. I don't often use a page file on windows, and it crashes no more often without one than with one.


(well, assuming you care about wasting resources and/or running a clean/elegant system. If you just don't care, then go ahead and give windows loads of hard drive space for it to leave idle)
Click to expand...

Thanks Jon, your post was a lot more helpful. :)
 
This topic still comes up all the time and I replied to a thread at another forum recently.

Purely playing Devil's Advocate here.

Let's say that with sufficient system memory the user believes that he or she no longer needs the page file. (Rhetorical question) Why is that?

The user believes that the OS will not need to page to a hard disk because there is sufficient system memory that paging will not be necessary. If this is true, then why why worry with turning the page file off? Turning the page file off only makes sense when the user has an abundance of physical memory. If that is the case, then turning the page file off seems to be a pointless move.

FWIW, I have recently done some testing with 12GB of memory vs 6GB vs 3GB. The OP here has 8GB so I think the same info applies. With 6 and 12, the system stopped most but not all pagie file activity. However, the miniscule amount of page file activity that persisted did not effect system performance at all. And, IIRC, the only data being paged was for the OS and not the game I was testing.

My point is, that the OS chose to place some data into virtual memory even when there was an abundance of physical memory available. So, until someone can explain to me in terms I understand why turning the page file off is a good idea, I'm leaving mine on.
 
JonJ678 said:
What a comment.

I do not agree with you, system managed is not the answer. A system with 4gb of ram does not need the amount of swap windows requests. There are a few (some would say badly written) programs that will refuse to install/run if there is no page file. So give them 128mb or so if you're worried about this.

This may have been removed with vista, even better odds its been removed with windows 7. A hangover from the days of bugger all system ram which is no longer relavent.

Linux objects if you use no swap file, but it runs excellently without one nonetheless. I don't often use a page file on windows, and it crashes no more often without one than with one.


(well, assuming you care about wasting resources and/or running a clean/elegant system. If you just don't care, then go ahead and give windows loads of hard drive space for it to leave idle)
Click to expand...

/atomic facepalm


read http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17870688&highlight=disable+pagefile

and read the links in there


and this.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654


it has been discussed to the death on here before, the end result is always the same, windows knows best
 
Last edited:
bledd. said:
there is not definitive list, just leave it as system managed.

everyone will agree with me tbh
Click to expand...

I agree in the sense you should always have a page file but don't let it sit at system managed. Best way to do it is to set the MAX and MIN to the same number to allocate page file space which will allow for a smother system. This will stop the HDD crunching a lot as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom