Anyone disabling pagefile?

VeNT · 20 Oct 2009 at 14:22

NathanE said:
Erm, no. Do not ever do this.

why not? surly nothings left on the pagefile after the PC's turned off?

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2009 at 15:23

VeNT said:
why not? surly nothings left on the pagefile after the PC's turned off?

Surely a start up would be much slower because common files aren't left in the pagefile?

NathanE · 20 Oct 2009 at 16:44

VeNT said:
why not? surly nothings left on the pagefile after the PC's turned off?

It has nothing to do with that. It's the fact that you're "tricking" the kernel into believing there is a benefit in swapping pages of memory out when really all it would be, unwittingly, doing is moving them from one location in memory to another. You should never put a page file on a RAM drive for this reason. Moreover, if the kernel had that extra RAM to play with in the first place it might not even "need" to perform a paging operation.

Broken Hope · 20 Oct 2009 at 16:53

NathanE said:
12GB RAM means you need a 12GB page file. No ifs and no buts.

Perhaps one of the most commonly asked questions related to virtual memory is, how big should I make the paging file? There’s no end of ridiculous advice out on the web and in the newsstand magazines that cover Windows, and even Microsoft has published misleading recommendations. Almost all the suggestions are based on multiplying RAM size by some factor, with common values being 1.2, 1.5 and 2. Now that you understand the role that the paging file plays in defining a system’s commit limit and how processes contribute to the commit charge, you’re well positioned to see how useless such formulas truly are.

Since the commit limit sets an upper bound on how much private and pagefile-backed virtual memory can be allocated concurrently by running processes, the only way to reasonably size the paging file is to know the maximum total commit charge for the programs you like to have running at the same time. If the commit limit is smaller than that number, your programs won’t be able to allocate the virtual memory they want and will fail to run properly.

So how do you know how much commit charge your workloads require? You might have noticed in the screenshots that Windows tracks that number and Process Explorer shows it: Peak Commit Charge. To optimally size your paging file you should start all the applications you run at the same time, load typical data sets, and then note the commit charge peak (or look at this value after a period of time where you know maximum load was attained). Set the paging file minimum to be that value minus the amount of RAM in your system (if the value is negative, pick a minimum size to permit the kind of crash dump you are configured for). If you want to have some breathing room for potentially large commit demands, set the maximum to double that number.

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

Aod · 20 Oct 2009 at 18:51

NathanE said:
It has nothing to do with that. It's the fact that you're "tricking" the kernel into believing there is a benefit in swapping pages of memory out when really all it would be, unwittingly, doing is moving them from one location in memory to another. You should never put a page file on a RAM drive for this reason. Moreover, if the kernel had that extra RAM to play with in the first place it might not even "need" to perform a paging operation.

i think he means a physical drive that uses DRAM for storage, ala Gigabyte i-RAM or the ACARD ANS-9010

Burnsy2023 said:
Also bear in mind that say yo have 16GB RAM, a single application cannot use it all. There is a 2GB (can be adjusted to 4GB iirc) per application memory limit and so virtual memory will still be used with very memory intensive apps.

the 2GB application memory limit was due to the 32-bit memory addressing scheme used by 32-bit windows. 64-windows allows far more memory to be allocated to a single process. i've seen a game on my system (64-bit Crysis...) using about 3GB once.

Burnsy2023 · 20 Oct 2009 at 19:11

Aod said:
the 2GB application memory limit was due to the 32-bit memory addressing scheme used by 32-bit windows. 64-windows allows far more memory to be allocated to a single process. i've seen a game on my system (64-bit Crysis...) using about 3GB once.

Like I said, it can be increased to 4GB but not any higher than that.

waynio · 20 Oct 2009 at 20:11

Since going from 4gb to 8gb I have not needed a page file and have had no problems without it.

Mattus · 20 Oct 2009 at 20:41

If you think you know more about memory management than the guys who wrote the Windows kernel, then by all means, turn the pagefile off. For the rest of us, it's best to let Windows manage it.

VeNT said:
if you wanna make it "fast" pop it on a ramdrive

What's the point, when you could just use that RAM as system memory to reduce the use of the pagefile?

Aod · 21 Oct 2009 at 04:25

Mattus said:
What's the point, when you could just use that RAM as system memory to reduce the use of the pagefile?

Aaaaargh! :

Aod said:
i think he means a physical drive that uses DRAM for storage, ala Gigabyte i-RAM or the ACARD ANS-9010

waynio said:
Since going from 4gb to 8gb I have not needed a page file and have had no problems without it.

my experience differed. then again, I actually USE all 8GB of ram in my system.