How much virtual memory with 2 GB RAM ?

[Super1]

Hi

1 - How much virtual memory do i need for 2 GB RAM or i let the Windows decide ?

2 - Do i need virtual memory for 2 GB RAM ? ( i think i don't )

I have Windows 7 RTM 7600

 

[slyfox2151]

yes you do need it, people still use it with 8gb of ram.

2-4gb will work well.

or else leave it as default(let windows decide)

 

[Super1]

yes you do need it, people still use it with 8gb of ram.

2-4gb will work well.

or else leave it as default(let windows decide)

But I heard that anyone have 2 GB of Ram or more they don't need the virtual memory because it will slow down the pc .

 

[slyfox2151]

it will slow you down if you have it disabled. ignore what someone may have told you.



i have mine on )let windows decide), its currently set itself to 4-6GB and using 400mb idleing.

 

[Laurijan]

Just let the settings be untouched.. changes can lead to problems with games.. at least in my case Fallout 3 crashed whenever i manually set the Page-File size

 

[Super1]

I'll Let the Windows decide

 

[Tatty_Two]

Some people got away with no pagefile with 2GB+ of Ram in XP, vista and 7 need more generally, some apps actually expect it and dont run/properly without it, I do always set mine manually but I have a partition just for the pagefile as that speeds it up slightly plus another tip is to set the intial and maximum size the same, that way the "virtual" memory is always reserved and immediatly available, it does not hurt to give it a try, say at perhaps 2048MB...... remember, Windows isnt always the greatest at managing itself and apps associated with it, thats why there are so many 3rd party substitutes like recovery software, defrag etc etc.

 

[Mussels]

But I heard that anyone have 2 GB of Ram or more they don't need the virtual memory because it will slow down the pc .

thats a myth/lie



stick with a 2GB page file, no matter how much ram you have. i've been doing it since i had 256MB of ram, and i'm doing it now with 8GB of ram - it works really well.

 

[DJEscreet]

Hi
You could raise it pretty much as much as you wanted. More seriously, just leave it be and let the Windows handle it.
Fiddling about with virtual memory is really only needed when tweaking hefty apps (a huge database for example) for performance. Tweaking virtual memory on a desktop computer is wasting valuable gaming time!

You hit the nail on the head with that one.......Checks Virtual mem settings.... gets back to H.A.W.X....

 

[caleb]

Let windows decide.

That was important when we had 5GB HDDs. who gives a f if Windows takes 500MB more when you have 500GB free?

Changing this always leads to performance drop's as you dont always check every possible scenario of applications running. Dont forget Win7 uses some relational model for data and it might not be as simple as runnings Quake2 to check if its REALLY ok.

 

[Mussels]

Let windows decide.

That was important when we had 5GB HDDs. who gives a f if Windows takes 500MB more when you have 500GB free?

Changing this always leads to performance drop's as you dont always check every possible scenario of applications running. Dont forget Win7 uses some relational model for data and it might not be as simple as runnings Quake2 to check if its REALLY ok.

you made a bad assumption.

You forget that when windows changes it all the time, its fragmenting itself, and your HDD - and since you cant defrag a page file, its not something fixable.

if you delete it, reboot, defrag, and set a static sized page file, it will be one contiguous fragment thus eliminating a possible source of poor performance on the system.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

My paging files are off right now. I can't say performance went up or down as I have not noticed it. All I can say it my risk of system halt due to low memory has gone up for sure.

I am going to create a 2 GB partition set the management to manual with 2 GB as min and max and see what happens. I have a pretty good idea of how Paging Files work and it is give an take. It can increase and decrease performance depending on the situation. In general, the less RAM the more it helps. At 4 GB and below I say let Windows do its thing.

 

[Mussels]

My paging files are off right now. I can't say performance went up or down as I have not noticed it. All I can say it my risk of system halt due to low memory has gone up for sure.

I am going to create a 2 GB partition set the management to manual with 2 GB as min and max and see what happens.

you dont need to bother with the partition, all that does is give you constant "no free space" warnings

if its set static it cant fragment anyway, so theres no advantage to the partition

 

[Laurijan]

My paging files are off right now. I can't say performance went up or down as I have not noticed it. All I can say it my risk of system halt due to low memory has gone up for sure.

I am going to create a 2 GB partition set the management to manual with 2 GB as min and max and see what happens.

That dedicated partition makes I/O times slower just let the Pagefile be on the OS partition

 

[Mussels]

how on earth do partitions make IO times slower. please provide some evidence to this.

 

[Laurijan]

how on earth do partitions make IO times slower. please provide some evidence to this.

Thats what i have read somewhere on TPU dunno know for sure though (will search for it).. isnt the HDD´s reading head jumping back and forth then more making IO times slower? (with a dedicated partition for pagefile)

 

[Mussels]

Thats what i have read somewhere on TPU dunno know for sure though (will search for it).. isnt the HDD´s reading head jumping back and forth then more making IO times slower? (with a dedicated partition for pagefile)

no more than it would anyway. its not like you're adding more distance for it to travel - its exactly the same as if you had a single partition.

all you're doing with a partition is making it so that data cant leave that one section of the HDD for another, you're not making any big changes to it

 

[Laurijan]

This is what MS says about I/O times on page files:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654

Page file input/output rates
To avoid overloading the system or other disks with page input/output (I/O) activity, use the following guidelines when you set up the page file on your computer:

* If the page I/O (real disk I/O) rate is more than 10 pages per second, we recommend that you do not put the page file where the I/O activity occurs on the system disk. When the page I/O rate is 10 pages per second or more, we recommend that you dedicate a separate hard disk for paging.
* If the page I/O rate to a particular disk that is used for paging is more than 60 disk I/O operations per second, use more than one dedicated page hard disk to obtain better performance. To do this, use multiple non-striped disks for paging, or use raid 0 striped disks for paging. Dedicate approximately one I/O hard disk to paging for every 60 pages per second of I/O activity.

For example, if a system is averaging 150 pages of I/O activity per second, use three individual hard disks, or a three-disk raid 0 stripe set for the page file.

Note These estimates are for hard disks that run at 7200 revolutions per minute (rpm). If you use a hard disk that runs faster, the I/O rate a disk can handle for page I/O will increase.

Note If peak performance is critical to your system, use peak I/O rates instead of average I/O rates for these calculations.

 

[Mussels]

that has nothing to do with partitions. thats all about physical DRIVES.

if you ahve three partitions, trying to read and write to all three at the same time is dumb - its like doing three copies on the one partition, a bad idea.

 

[AsRock]

Let windows do it as for fixed size ( regardless of what size) in some games have give me some issue's in the past.

Turning it off is good but some games \ apps require it like Titan Quest.

 

[Mussels]

Let windows do it as for fixed size ( regardless of what size) in some games have give me some issue's in the past.

Turning it off is good but some games \ apps require it like Titan Quest.

i'd like to know what games have given you problems - i'm yet to meet one

 

[Laurijan]

i'd like to know what games have given you problems - i'm yet to meet one

With Fallout 3 i got less crashes when letting the page file be untouched.. could be random though

 

[Mussels]

With Fallout 3 i got less crashes when letting the page file be untouched.. could be random though

fallout 3 crashes? mine had issues refusing to start once due to EAX emulation, but the game itself never crashed on me


at a guess i'd say random - i always think "its possible that this was the cause for my crash" or "most likely cause" - but you never assume it always bites you in the ass sooner or later

 

[Laurijan]

fallout 3 crashes? mine had issues refusing to start once due to EAX emulation, but the game itself never crashed on me


at a guess i'd say random - i always think "its possible that this was the cause for my crash" or "most likely cause" - but you never assume it always bites you in the ass sooner or later

That senario was back in the days when Fallout 3 was realease and with early patches... Fallout 3 was very likely to crash often back then in my case

 

[vagxtr]

My paging files are off right now. I can't say performance went up or down as I have not noticed it. All I can say it my risk of system halt due to low memory has gone up for sure.

As far as i look Win7 virtual page management has same options as WinXP and dont let you fully disable it? So i did best i could and keep it minimal 128-384MB and didn't see any slowdown

How could i turn it off? (so windoze never came up to use my hdd for swap anymore on next reboot)

you dont need to bother with the partition, all that does is give you constant "no free space" warnings

Yep it always nagging and we cant mount partition as hidden, and if we mount it in some folder (best win can do) then we cant put swapfile on it .... stpdwin