RAM limit with WinXP

Jon123456

Jon123456

Jon123456

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5 May 2011
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If I load Windows Task Manager, I can check the PF Usage on my Win XP setup. I notice that if I am above about 2.8GB PF Usage, my PC starts to slow down.

Why is this?

Thanks,

Jon
 
How much RAM do you have?

Basically if the pagefile is being used then the disk is being accessed while this happens so you can imagine stuff will slow down as you're loading data off the disk at the same time as Windows is trying to manage a pagefile of that size on the same disk. Generally this isn't a problem if you have enough RAM as pagefile usage will be lower so less disk thrashing during daily usage.

You have a few solutions.

1) Install a spare HDD that is comparable in speed and set the Pagefile to that drive while turning it off on the OS drive.

2) Install more RAM and limit the pagefile to a set min/max (1GB, for example).

3) Upgrade to Windows 7 which has much better memory management :p
 
Here is some data from System Information...

Total Physical Memory 4,096.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 998.52 MB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 8.94 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
 
I would definitely manually set the pagefile to around 2GB min/max then. What apps are using the most memory? 4GB is ample for XP to function smoothly.
 
I thought WinXP had difficulty using more than 3GB or something like that.

firefox: 581mb
iexplore (several): 600mb

I have all sorts of apps and utilities open in system tray. Isn't Windows supposed to be good at managing the pagefile size for optimal performance?
 
Windows 7 is yes but Windows XP not so good when you put it into perspective.

32bit Windows will address up to 3.5GB of RAM depending on your GFX card's VRAM size. The more VRAM your GFX has the less RAM Windows will utilise.
 
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