2Gb DDR2 Ram. What swap file?

zer · 13 Aug 2007 at 17:47

Hi there!
Well, title says everything... Just got a 2 * 1Gb of DDR2 800 Ram and wanting to know to what should i set the swap file. I have only one physical hard disc and haven't partinioned it at all (bit of a newcomer to all these...) Used to have it set(when i had 1 Gb of Ram)at 1536Mb fixed.
Rest of the system: Win XP , AMD 3800+, Radeon X1900GT, 250 Gb HDD.
So. Which is faster? 3072 Mb fixed? No swap file at all?
Many thanks!

Cob · 13 Aug 2007 at 18:04

Let Windows manage your swap file.

zer · 13 Aug 2007 at 18:46

R U sure? I think i read somewhere that this is the slowest option you have.

helmutcheese · 13 Aug 2007 at 18:54

BS mate, since XP its been proven its best to let Windows manage it, messing with gains nothing or very little and turning off is dumb esp if you try laod up Photoshop.

XP will default it to 1.5x the amount of fitted Memory (up to a max point).

Amonlym · 13 Aug 2007 at 22:16

leave it on auto.

if you want a performance boost, sick the swap on a seperate physical drive from windows/games.

if you limit it manually you are either going to be wasting a chunk of hdd, or run into a hard out-of-memory error - this will without doubt happen half ay thru saving you vital 1000hr bit of work / game save and throw the whole lot in the bin.,

GeForce · 13 Aug 2007 at 22:32

Auto

Ever since Windows 95 the OS has done a brilliant job of managing its paging file :cool:

Jon

FreeStream · 14 Aug 2007 at 15:10

I have mine off, no problems after 8 months!

Doesn't waste 3gb of my 74Gb Raptor either then.

jbloggs · 14 Aug 2007 at 16:55

I use a static pagefile of the same size of the amount of ram I have, on a different HDD on another controller.

The variations of pagefile use are many, try a few and see what "works" for you.

w3bbo · 15 Aug 2007 at 09:36

The biggest performance boost you will get it to put it on the begining of a harddrive separate from the hard drive you OS is on. As stated, let windows manage the size.

Mercutio · 15 Aug 2007 at 10:17

w3bbo said:
The biggest performance boost you will get it to put it on the begining of a harddrive separate from the hard drive you OS is on. As stated, let windows manage the size.

This was my approach. Have somewhere in the reason of 1.5TB storage in main system (300GB boot, 2x 320GB Seagates in raid 0, 2x 200GB Maxtors) so loss of small amount of space not an issue. I made a mini partition of 4GB at the start of the raid, stuck it in there and left it to it.

SGCWill · 16 Aug 2007 at 12:47

is it OK to put it onto a flash drive?

RichDuffy · 16 Aug 2007 at 13:33

darudeuk said:
WoW So many people knowing nothing about swap files.

You might want to think twice before making that statement - some of your advice is nonsense. Not all of it though - I'm not going to start calling you stupid or anything...

If you have 2gig+ Windows XP SHOULD auto set it to nothing...

It will. UNTIL the physical memory is maxed out. Then it will create a swap file for the 'extra' data.

Why are people telling you to to do Virtual mem... it went out with the plague.. WHY do you want your program to load on your harddrive? You dont. you want it in your ram! ..Cos your hard disk cant do 2-3GIG a sec xfer rate!

It's known as a swap file for a reason - because it holds recently used data together in a defined location, and when the data is needed again after being superceded by other data, it is swapped from the file to the physical RAM. Programs never 'load' from the page file unless they are too big. In which case you need more RAM.

Regardless of the size of your page file - if your machine doesn't need to use more memory space than its physical RAM allows, the page file will sit there idle. Better for it to already exist and be of a constant size and location than to not exist at all.

AND if you insist on having it, set it to ONE value, and if you have 2 HDD put it on the drive your games arnt on. ie VM min 1024mb, max 1024mb

Indeed. Reason being that it eliminates the need to increase it on the fly, shrink it at shutdown, and risk fragmenting it.

helmutcheese · 16 Aug 2007 at 13:35

darudeuk said:
WoW So many people knowing nothing about swap files.

If you have 2gig+ Windows XP SHOULD auto set it to nothing...

For the love of god ZERO VIRTUAL MEM. ON WINXP FOR ANYTHING 2GIG OR ABOVE!

Why are people telling you to to do Virtual mem... it went out with the plague.. WHY do you want your program to load on your harddrive? You dont. you want it in your ram! ..Cos your hard disk cant do 2-3GIG a sec xfer rate!

VM on Vista? NONE if you have 8gig of ram..... about 2-4gig if you dont depending.

AND if you insist on having it, set it to ONE value, and if you have 2 HDD put it on the drive your games arnt on. ie VM min 1024mb, max 1024mb

You know nothing mister smartypants

, XP does not turn off swap file with 2GB, it actually makes it 2046MB, and thats ram fitted and clean install of XP without me touching anything, you try doing some heavy Photoshop work with no swap file.

Skree · 16 Aug 2007 at 14:23

I heard that Vista can use any available memory as a fetch... dunno much about it tbh as i'm learning Vista... but it can use it as a performance boost IIRC. Including flash ram cards. I'm going to experiment with my 4gb mem stick pro duo.. you could use a card reader for your swap file... esp with the Ultra II superfast cards

helmutcheese · 16 Aug 2007 at 15:43

The function you talk of is called ReadyBoost, it uses usb stick or some usb cards in a card reader, it helps as it adds to the memory already avail to your HDD on its own cache as well as the super prefetch mode, thats why its faster then actual HDD being used as memory.