Pagefile size

[aco Veteran]

I have 640MB of RAM on my WinXP box, how much HD space should I set aside for the pagefile if any?

[grimman]

i've no real answer here, just some suggestions and guesses ;)

on my machine w/ 704 megs of ram (yeye, don't laugh at the number ;)) i have just as much virtual memory, swapfile, pagefile... whatever.

so... to the facts =)

if u keep your maximum size and minimum size the same (ie 640mb) you won't have a fragmented swapfile, which in turn generally helps performance.

mkay?

// j

[aco Veteran]

mkay,

thanks for the suggestion.

[PabUK Veteran]

Same here, I set mine to the size of my RAM. So I have 512MB RAM and a 512MB pagefile.

[Khujo]

on my system with 448MB ram i use a 320 swap file on 1 drive and a 320 on another with no swap file on the drive xp is installed on, it helps to get the swap file of the system drive, but will do no good if its a partition on the same drive.

[YahoKa]

I only have 384 Megs of RAM :( I feel like a newbie compared to you guys! Anyways, i use a 200MB/200MB swap file, without the caching of exec. files.

[aco Veteran]

Originally posted by Khujo

on my system with 448MB ram i use a 320 swap file on 1 drive and a 320 on another with no swap file on the drive xp is installed on, it helps to get the swap file of the system drive, but will do no good if its a partition on the same drive.

:) I know someone with 448MB of RAM, I thought he was the only one...

Let me guess, 64MB - 128MB - 256MB.

BTW, I only have one HD so i'll just leave the pagefile on C:.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Well that's od.. I have 768MB of RAM and NO PAGEFILE! My pagefile was eating up 1.2GB of hardrive space making the total RAM at 2.0GB. What tha hell do I need all that ram for, to run programs? Hell no.... SDRAM is much faster than the pagefile (hardrive) so more the OS never uses it. For people with a small amount of ram then it's good to have a pagefile. For Us lucky ones with over 384MB of ram... then I suggest none. I opened all the programs on my PC (well most) and i was only using 289MB (not including big games like Red Fraction or Max Payne) But MS Office was running... all the programs and every lil tool that Windows come with and my chat programs as well...

Does anyone remember that lil file that tested your PC to see how good it handles memory. All it did was open a bunch of notepads till your system crashed..... some people were able to get 450 different notepads open and that's with 256MB of ram. I know it sounds small cuz come on.. it's notepad, but opening several of them makes it hard for the OS to keep track of what goes where and what's in which window. IF you don't have a good system it will crash way sooner than 450 notepads... If anyone remember that or have it send me a link.

[grimman]

swap/page-file =P

i prefer swap because that was it's extension earlier, but meh. i can say page too.

anyways, page-file is actually a good idea. tho i have this and that much ram, i am LESS likely to run out of ram. and if your os can take care well care of the ram available that's great! but let's not forget all the programs that leak =(

and those huge images u make in photoshop (100mb images+ which i do quite alot) and maybe some 3d-studio max or such...

those aren't the most likely situations, but that's why there's a page-file.

AND if u have a very small amount of ram ;)

cheers.

// j

[sdibias]

A good rule of thumb is to set your page file to 1.5 times the ammount of your installed RAM.

You have A couple of options to maximise performance:

1) Specify A higher minimum pagefile size yourself to reduce WinXP overhead.

2) Place the pagefile on your fastest local hard drive for better speed.

Total Physical Memory is how many kilobytes of RAM the PC has. If you subtract Total Physical Memor from Total Commit Charge, you can see how much more RAM you need at that momemt to avoid paging.

If you have more drives, consider creating more pagefiles (you're not limited to just one) Infact, the more hard drives on which you have pagefile fragments living, the better WinXP performs.

Could go on for too long with this swapfile thingy-

Errrr, must eat now ;)

[WyllyWylly]

Looking through this I had to add something that is relevant.

Windows XP, 2000, and the entire NT-based line of operating systems are designed to use a page file, no matter how much RAM they have. Period. And they will use it too, so setting the value of the page file to 0 is one of the worst things you can do. Face it, NT/2k/XP are excellent at managing memory all by themselves, so why trash a good thing for something unproven?

If you have enough space, and modern drives are a) cheap and b) huge, be generous. If you run out of room on a 60GB hard drive start doing some housecleaning or making some CDs. Or get a bigger drive. Or if you just can't stand the thought of either of those, then start taking space from the swap file.

A hard drive that is over 75% full will have performance issues. Period. That's how computers are.

The only changes you should worry about are:

Where. The fastest partition on a separate drive is the best since NT/2k/XP can access more than one drive concurrently.

Resizing. Set the minimum and maximum values to both equal the highest value so the OS doesn't resize them and waste cycles.

If you have a slew of hard drives, split it across more than one. But not across multiple partitions, because the drive head will have to travel more and it will be slower.

And with the amount of RAM you have, consider disabling Executive Paging, which will keep the entire operating system in memory and give you much snappier performance. To do this, edit this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMControlSet001ControlSession ManagerMemory ManagementDisablePagingExecutive

Or download X-Setup and do the same thing.

Set the value to '1' (decimal or hex, it's the same). Reboot and have a blast.