Does having Virtual Memory Improve Performance?

[toxictoaster_737]

Hey

I was wondering.. does having a page file aka virtual memory, actually improve performance over not having one.

Of course in order to not have one.....you would have to have alot of memory....> 1Gb of course.

Thanks

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Of course it does. Without it you'd run out of memory.

But if you had enough physical memory, it would certainly be better in theory. But Windows is designed to use virtual memory, so probably not.

[Tenebrious_Star]

I dunno, Benchmarks seem to be a little higher without.. and i only have 768 mb of ram... theres the odd game where I actually run out of memory (Vampire Masquerades) but then again I only have 768.. if i had a couple gb... I'd have more available mem then the typical pagefile/ram combo anyways. except it wouldnt be slowly reading half from my HD while the HD may be in use.

[toxictoaster_737]

Explain how its better...just because it defaults to on....if you had 2gb of memory....do you think you would still need virtual memory. Windows comes with it on by default because they have to. Most consumer systems don't have that much memory. Fact is...you have 1gb of memory, and your not tapping it out....you running virtual memory you don't need, and making hard drive commits that you don't have to.

[sedrickmo]

I must say that you really do not need to have a page file in most windows environments that have 1gb-2gb of memory. I have my MSCE, and have a detailed understanding of the windows o/s, as well as, unix. Both of those o/s's have page files/swap files for usage after the physical memory is filled. However, windows xp at times uses the page file to store data that is dormant on the physical memory. By dormant im referring to, data that hasn't been accessed in a long time, or has been tagged as low relevance. This being said, on systems with more than 1gb of memory, windows will rarely fill the physical memory. Even though it is not filled, it still has to deal with low access data, it cache's it the hard drive, despite having ample physical memory.

By turning off the page file, on systems with ample physical memory windows will have no choice but to send the data to the physical memory. On computers with < 1gb of memory, there is a high chance with will have bad consequences; mainly low stability. However, on systems with more the 1gb and preferably 2gb, there will only be a low chance of instability. Either way, having to page file turned off will increase performance, safely if there is enough ram, (around 2gb at this point).

The safest solution however, is to support new hard drives that have large cache's.

My vote is No

Virtual Memory does not increase performance.

Edited May 17, 2005 by sedrickmo

[iluvsimpleplan]

Hey Guys

Wow, I just bought a alienware system, and it has the virtual memory turned off by default. I have 2048mb of ddr 400. My system always runs awsome. It makes cs: source run so much better.

anyone want to play?

Message me on steam.

iluvsimpleplan

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Having VM enabled on systems with sufficient memory to handle the load should neither add or remove performance significantly.

Some applications will not run properly without VM. Enabling VM also avoids "out of memory" errors quite nicely.

I can't really think of a reason to have VM disabled. Yes, it will use a bit of hard disk space. I think we can all probably spare it these days.

[+BudMan MVC]

Here is some basic info on virtual memory - I HIGHLY suggest you look over it..

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

[Martyn]

I have 1gb RAM and have the initial VM size set to 500mb and the maximum to 3000mb.

Are those good settings?

[temple_treefrog]

I enable system core performance on my computer which keeps the core of Windows XP in physical memory rather than the page file.

Since then I've noticed an increase in performance overall, and my systems always been stable. :happy:

[temple_treefrog]

  Martyn said:

I have 1gb RAM and have the initial VM size set to 500mb and the maximum to 3000mb.

Are those good settings?

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I've also got 1GB of ram, and I've set my page file to System managed size. At the moment, the recommended page file size is 1534MB and the currently allocated page file size is 1535MB.

[John Veteran]

Tenebrious_Star, toxictoaster_737, sedrickmo, iluvsimpleplan, and MAckDawG:

As much as I'd love to prove all of you wrong right now, I have more pressing matters to attend to...

Just know that it's a bad idea to disable the page file no matter how much RAM you have.

[chmsant]

  John said:

Tenebrious_Star, toxictoaster_737, sedrickmo, iluvsimpleplan, and MAckDawG:

As much as I'd love to prove all of you wrong right now, I have more pressing matters to attend to...

Just know that it's a bad idea to disable the page file no matter how much RAM you have.

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very much agreed. Windows uses a swapfile no matter what... even if you have it "disabled" it will still use one. Dont believe me? Disable it, restart your computer, and then open task manager and check the PF usage graph...

[McLaren_F1]

http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks5.htm

;)

[Mattimeo]

All this talk about having your page file disabled and that it might be bad is just that...talk. You should only disable your page file if you have 2GB+ memory. Not 1.8...not 1.5...not 1GB....only 2GB+. And there are two types of paging that goes on in Windows. You can get rid of one, you can't get rid of the other although what you can do is make it so it never uses it. But again...simply put, if you have less then 2GB, save yourself the time and don't turn it off.

[+allan MVC]

There is no such thing as disabling virtual memory (pagefile) with XP. The only thing you can do is disable your ability to manage it. XP was designed to page and will always page - whether or not you know it. So it makes a lot more sense to enable it and manage its settings yourself.

[sanshairo]

definitly YES!

guys, a comment, just take it from a computer engineer specialized in CPU architecture. :p :whistle:

Virtual Memory is NOT the hard-disk.

VM is the address space that each process has. Each process deals as if u have 4GB of memory, then in the CPU a translation of that address into a physical address in the main memory happens.

now what u r all talking about, is called the swapping area. it is an area in the HD wer processes r put when no enough space for them in the Main Memory. Now the address space of each process points to either a place in memory, or a place in the swapping area. whenever a process in the swapping area must be used, it is swapped by another process in the memory.

now the thing that windows shows "low virtual memory" points that there is not enough space for the swapping area. I still wonder why they r using that term, maybe just to make it easier on people.

sorry for sounding like a Nerd ;)

[Max Veteran]

Keep it enabled. Enough said.

Whats the point of turning it 'completely' off anyway? If it doesn't do anything, just leave it there. Its effort turning it off, unless you have a 10GB HDD in which I doubt you have in a system with 1GB RAM.

[+allan MVC]

One more time - you CANNOT "turn it off".

[TheWahbinator]

If you wan't you can transfer your PF to another drive and take it off your C:.

Zero-Page files are mainly useful for servers, but not really for everyday computers. You can probably experiment with a 256-384 MB setting and see how it works

[zikl]

i got it disable saves my space and i dont nned windows writing more garbage on my HD

btw: i always run low on memory lol

[BoMBeR1027]

Well, I run mine off always (or as off as I can). Why should I let Windows use my HD to store files temporarily when half of my memory is free? It just makes no sense. I have 768 MB of memory and I run my system w/o a swap file. I have had my system mess up once. That situation involved a very demanding game, WMP10, AIM, MSN Messenger, and Firefox. I notice signifigant performance differences with it off.

[randy_tho]

  BoMBeR1027 said:

Well, I run mine off always (or as off as I can). Why should I let Windows use my HD to store files temporarily when half of my memory is free? It just makes no sense. I have 768 MB of memory and I run my system w/o a swap file. I have had my system mess up once. That situation involved a very demanding game, WMP10, AIM, MSN Messenger, and Firefox. I notice signifigant performance differences with it off.

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I may be wrong as I haven't done much tweaking on the page file with XP. I suppose I've never felt the need. Back in the day though you would set your page file like 1.5 - 2 times your system memory. You set the min and max the same size and this prevents windows from 'adjusting' the page file size which is one of the biggest boggs on your system. (Or at least was a few years ago pre XP.) With the amount of memory and speed of HDDs we have now this effect would be less I suppose.

[mr_demilord]

If you have a locked swapfile on a second harddrive it will as be fast as no swapfile.

And it is always recommed to use a swapfile and if you have 1 GB ram windows will use that memory first and then the swapfile

[yanowhiz]

Virtual Memory does make some difference, but it usually isn't noticeable if you have a lot of memory.