Win 7 x64 - 8GB RAM - What to do with the pagefile?

By RATiO
in Microsoft (Windows)

 Share

Recommended Posts

Proficient

RATiO

Posted
Posted

I'm on Windows 7 64-bit, have 8GB of RAM which is quite alot and I notice Windows sets my Pagefile to 8-12 GB. That makes a total of 16GB! Surely thats too much so am I better off:

1. Disabling the pagefile

2. Setting it small, e.g. 512MB or 1GB

3. Setting it medium e.g. 4GB

4. Leave it for Windows to manage (8-12 GB)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Roger H. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Well i generally set it to 512MB once i have more than 4GB but that's just me. Most would just recommend to just let Windows manage it and be done. If you got 8GB of RAM i'm sure you have a bigger than 40GB drive also.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Rising Star

kInG aLeXo

Posted
Posted

Leave it to Windows.

Also don't use any of those registry cleaners\boosters\Windows optimizers, etc also.Win 7 knows how to maintain itself, such optimizations are not really necessary anymore.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

jakem1

Posted
Posted

I'd make it as small as possible and then disable it. It serves no purpose when you have that much RAM and will just waste disk space. If you leave it to Windows to manage it will take up 8GB on your disk which I'm sure you can put to better use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

I'm on Windows 7 64-bit, have 8GB of RAM which is quite alot and I notice Windows sets my Pagefile to 8-12 GB. That makes a total of 16GB! Surely thats too much so am I better off:

1. Disabling the pagefile

2. Setting it small, e.g. 512MB or 1GB

3. Setting it medium e.g. 4GB

4. Leave it for Windows to manage (8-12 GB)

pagefileo.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Phouchg

Posted
Posted

Page file is like an appendix. It's obsolete, it has no use, but it can still cause problems, if neglected. It might be a security risk, it eats up disk space, it often prevents full disk defrag. Windows and many programs still use loads of temp files for any imaginable purpose, even if machine has sh00tload of RAM. I won't let Windows to screw my hard disk(s), disabled. You decide now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Proficient

RATiO

Posted
  • Author
Posted

To all the people that say to leave it how it is, is that just your opinion or do you have actual proof that changing it causes problems?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

+Warwagon MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

To all the people that say to leave it how it is, is that just your opinion or do you have actual proof that changing it causes problems?

Do you have any proof that turning it off has any benefits?

  • Pam14160, ilovetech and Sionic Ion
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Mr. Gibs

Posted
Posted

Page file is like an appendix. It's obsolete, it has no use, but it can still cause problems, if neglected. It might be a security risk, it eats up disk space, it often prevents full disk defrag. Windows and many programs still use loads of temp files for any imaginable purpose, even if machine has sh00tload of RAM. I won't let Windows to screw my hard disk(s), disabled. You decide now.

To all the people that say to leave it how it is, is that just your opinion or do you have actual proof that changing it causes problems?

Amazing how people still believe the pagefile myths :rolleyes:

  • Sionic Ion and ilovetech
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Veteran

lalalawawawa

Posted
Posted

To all the people that say to leave it how it is, is that just your opinion or do you have actual proof that changing it causes problems?

There are some stupid myths that tech "educated" (notice the ""s) people think disabling it is better. There is absolutely no reason to disable it, unless you use use some goddamn do-it-yourself hard drive that dies in two days. LITERALY.

It plays a vital part in memory management, especially considering the fact that it acts as a secondary "main" memory. Please, for the love of common sense, leave it on.

Also, while we are at it, DO NOT ****ING USE ANY REGISTRY CLEANERS, ESPECIALLY SOME PIECE OF **** STUFF THAT FORCES YOU TO PAY TO "FIX" YOUR REGISTRY "PROBLEMS" WHICH ARE FREAKING NON-EXISTENT.

There. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Proficient

Emil Valsson

Posted
Posted

For people having plenty of RAM and perhaps SSD's as well, having a big pagefile would be waste of valuable space. I have 12GB of RAM in my computer along with 120GB SSD. I think it's nonsense to make pagefile eat up 24GB of expensive SSD diskspace so I lower it to 1024-2048.

  • Salty Wagyu and ahhell
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Veteran

lalalawawawa

Posted
Posted

For people having plenty of RAM and perhaps SSD's as well, having a big pagefile would be waste of valuable space. I have 12GB of RAM in my computer along with 120GB SSD. I think it's nonsense to make pagefile eat up 24GB of expensive SSD diskspace so I lower it to 1024-2048.

Start Starcraft 2, WoW, L4D2, TF2, have a few programs running... And start several VMs while you are at it. :p

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

+Majesticmerc MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

In your case, leave it alone. The pagefile will get barely any use anyway, but turning it off is bad idea. For starters Windows uses the pagefile as a dumping ground when there is a BSOD, turning it off removes this ability; but there are also benchmarks that do show that having the pagefile off will slightly decrease performance, even when you never run out of RAM (why this happens I can't tell you).

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Enthusiast

causa45

Posted
Posted

One of the first thing after a reinstall is that I reduce the pagefile to around 400 mb. Just a habbit of mine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

jakem1

Posted
Posted

Start Starcraft 2, WoW, L4D2, TF2, have a few programs running... And start several VMs while you are at it. :p

What would that prove? It's not a realistic scenario.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Proficient

lars77

Posted
Posted

I think the pagefile gets set that way due to the way Windows creates crash dumps...normally it has the ability to make a dumpfile of your RAM's contents, to help figure out where the crash occured. So the more RAM you have, the larger the pagefile's default size gets. My Vista 64 machine has 8GB RAM, & not surprisingly has an 8GB page file.

There's some good discuss on pagefile stuff here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2004/05/05/126532.aspx

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/10/running-xp-with-the-pagefile-disabled.html

..interestingly he started out being all about getting rid of the pagefile, but a month later changed his mind when he kept running into strange behavior that wasn't happening before he disabled the pagefile. I think the gist is that without a pagefile you may run into random programs that expect a pagefile to exist, & when it doesn't strange things will happen.

Of course that info is old, not sure if any of that has changed. Personally I'd just leave it alone, it seems like you'd encounter more mystery issues getting rid of the pagefile. If you're really, really short on disk space for some reason, & you're not going to get a bigger hard drive, then you're probably better off disabling System Protection since that is almost always larger than the pagefile.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Rising Star

OuchOfDeath

Posted
Posted

In your case, leave it alone. The pagefile will get barely any use anyway, but turning it off is bad idea. For starters Windows uses the pagefile as a dumping ground when there is a BSOD, turning it off removes this ability; but there are also benchmarks that do show that having the pagefile off will slightly decrease performance, even when you never run out of RAM (why this happens I can't tell you).

Decrease performance? Where are these benchmarks? I'd like to see them as that only makes sense if Microsoft coded the memory management wrong.

Besides that single claim of a slight performance decrease, there's little point in a pagefile at 8 gigs. One person mentioned kernel dumps need the page file in case of a BSOD or something of that sort. I'm not sure if that's true as that again makes little sense (at first glance). One thing you can't do without a pagefile at least the size of your ram is hibernation, since that's where the computer keeps the status of your computer right before hibernation comes into effect. Most people don't have any use for that feature though.

I always disable the page file, and I'm only at 4 gigs. There's two issues with disabling it. The first is Windows will pop up a "Low Memory" dialog every time you start hovering around 65 to 75 percent% used ram. Now this makes sense for systems with little Ram, but when it comes to 8 gigs that's at a ton of extra ram. You can disable this dialog like this: http://superuser.com/questions/41789/how-to-suppress-low-memory-warnings-in-vista-home-premium-when-running-without

The second problem is Windows will now not give you any warning at all if you run out of memory, and programs will start crashing. I've had the computer crash a very few times too when that happened, even though it probably shouldn't have if proper memory management practices were followed. It's simply a matter of getting a feel for how you use the computer. I find I'll have to close Chrome if I also have a bunch of standard programs open while I play Starcraft 2, as that sometimes hits the 4 gig limit. The good thing out of all of this is your computing experience as a result of this should be faster since you'll be forced to avoid hitting the memory limit, which drags your system into using your super-slow harddrive as memory which is just ridiculous these days with lightning fast memory.

It's up to you. You probably won't ever notice a difference at 8 gigs. Personally I like to be on "The Edge" of things and and have my computer be as efficient as possible, even if this efficiency is only theoretical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Community Regular

brink668

Posted
Posted

To all the people that say to leave it how it is, is that just your opinion or do you have actual proof that changing it causes problems?

I once watch a long video presentation on Windows Memory Management from Windows XP to Windows 7, and the creators of the Sysinternals tools specifically stated its best to leave page file be.

Ill update the thread once I find the video but it was on Microsoft website some place, might be difficult actually finding it now but it was back in early February 2010 the last time I saw it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Veteran

DKAngel

Posted
Posted

leave it be, ive also got win7x64 and 8gig ramif u happen to have an ssd move the pagefile else where but dont dissable it just let windows do its thing

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Grand Master

Southern Patriot

Posted
Posted
One thing you can't do without a pagefile at least the size of your ram is hibernation, since that's where the computer keeps the status of your computer right before hibernation comes into effect. Most people don't have any use for that feature though.

Where the **** did you get that idea? The page file has nothing to do with the hibernation feature. That's what hiberfil.sys is for!

  • soonerproud, iuerg87yerg879e0rg9erugjer, Asharae and 1 other
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.