Page file size?

[Recon-UK]

What is a good size to go with on Windows 10 64?

I have 8 GB ram installed and currently for all drives it is auto set up for the exact same size as my physical memory.

 

[natr0n]

You dont really need much around 1-2gb is perfectly fine.
type in either 1024 or 2048 for main drive.

 

[Recon-UK]

You dont really need much around 1-2gb is perfectly fine.
type in either 1024 or 2048 for main drive.

As i put it in custom, Windows was actually saying "1918mb" as recommended for both drives, so your answer here is very spot on! thanks

 

[AsRock]

Leave it as default, i have 16Gig in my systems and on auto it's 2.4Gig. Screwing with it just highers the chance of some thing going wrong, Sure it may never happen but still at least on auto and if there is a reason it needs it you will not get a issue.

Edited for typo.

 

[Frick]

Leave it as default, i have 16Gig in my systems and on auto it's 2.4Gig. Screwing with it just highers the chance of some thing going wrong, Sure it may never happen but still at least on auto and if there is a reason it needs it you will not get a issue.

Edited for typo.

You have to check up on it though, when I went from 8GB to 16GB RAM Win7 set my page file to twice that, on my poor 120GB SSD.

 

[Recon-UK]

I run a 500GB SSD and 1TB Samsung HDD, biggest ram eater so far is COD GHOSTS??? 7GB of actual physical RAM usage is insane, BF4 on the largest maps with 64 players only eats 5.5GB.
Only play COD for single player though.

 

[AsRock]

You have to check up on it though, when I went from 8GB to 16GB RAM Win7 set my page file to twice that, on my poor 120GB SSD.

When i posted was the 1st time i checked it, although i knew what it was due to explorer.

 

[Jetster]

With a large SSD just leave it alone. If your hurting for space then 2048

 

[Kursah]

+1 Let Windows do its thing.

I haven't had PF management issues in 7, 8 or 10 letting the OS handle it, 120GB-1TB+ SSD's and HDD's. Might not hurt to check it, as some users have stated they've had PF management issues on their systems...none of the ones I personally run or have sold/deployed have had such issues that I've seen during any audit I've performed.

Leave it alone and game on.

 

[trog100]

if you have enough real ram windows dosnt use its page file.. if it does you will soon notice the slow down..

8 gigs should be enough for most things.. ether way if windows is using its swap file its a good idea to buy some more of the real stuff..

trog

 

[bonehead123]

if you have enough real ram windows dosnt use its page file.. if it does you will soon notice the slow down..

8 gigs should be enough for most things.. ether way if windows is using its swap file its a good idea to buy some more of the real stuff..

trog

^^THIS^^

I've been letting the system manage it since XP and have yet to have any issues whatsoever.....but..... I have ALWAYS had more than enough ram in my rigs to cover anything I might do usage wise to.....

Leave it alone & be happy

 

[qubit]

Best left to Auto unless you're running low on space and you're unable to free up room for it.

 

[P4-630]

Mine is on auto, and it's just using 2432MB

 

[trog100]

i run with my swap file off because i have 32 gigs of ram (way more than i can make use of) and use a small 126 ssd boot/system drive.. windows taking up a huge chunk of that for a swap file that will never get used makes no sense..

the more real ram you have the more drive space windows takes up for its swap file it should never have to use.. many years ago it mattered now with ram as cheap as it is its just a waste of hard drive space..

hard drives are also cheap but solid state drives not so much.. plus i like a small easy to back up operating system.. mine weighs in with all the apps i need at around 23 gig.. a virgin windows 10 install can be around 16 gig.. or in my case left to windows around 35 gig.. he he

mostly its best just to leave windows alone.. the only important thing is to make sure you have enough real ram so that windows never has to use its swap file.. most people think it serves some essential purpose but it dosnt.. its just there cos its always been there.. he he

trog

ps.. for what its worth i have enough ram to load my entire operating system into and still have plenty to spare.. my operating system at 23 gigs would easily fit into my ram at 32 gig.. i even bought a ram drive to try and do something like this but so far i havnt been able to.. i would like everything i commonly use to be loaded into ram.. or at least a big chunk of it.. but it dosnt seem possible..

 

[Jetster]

i run with my swap file off because i have 32 gigs of ram (way more than i can make use of) and use a small 126 ssd boot/system drive.. windows taking up a huge chunk of that for a swap file that will never get used makes no sense..

the more real ram you have the more drive space windows takes up for its swap file it should never have to use.. many years ago it mattered now with ram as cheap as it is its just a waste of hard drive space..

hard drives are also cheap but solid state drives not so much.. plus i like a small easy to back up operating system.. mine weighs in with all the apps i need at around 23 gig.. a virgin windows 10 install can be around 16 gig.. or in my case left to windows around 35 gig.. he he

mostly its best just to leave windows alone.. the only important thing is to make sure you have enough real ram so that windows never has to use its swap file.. most people think it serves some essential purpose but it dosnt.. its just there cos its always been there.. he he

trog

ps.. for what its worth i have enough ram to load my entire operating system into and still have plenty to spare.. my operating system at 23 gigs would easily fit into my ram at 32 gig.. i even bought a ram drive to try and do something like this but so far i havnt been able to.. i would like everything i commonly use to be loaded into ram.. or at least a big chunk of it.. but it dosnt seem possible..

Deleting it is fine, but keep in mind if you delete your page file a memory dump has no where to go and will be deleted. Not a big deal but just FYI. Really there is nothing to gain by deleting a page file. Except for the physical space. Windows set your page file the same size as your ram for a reason. So suggesting you should delete it if you have 16+ Gb ram and wont need it is inaccurate. You can also recover Data on a BSOD if you have the dump file

"Microsoft says that, when the page file is set to a system-managed size and the computer is configured for automatic memory dumps, “Windows sets the size of the paging file large enough to ensure that a kernel memory dump can be captured most of the time.” As Microsoft points out, crash dumps are an important consideration when deciding what size the page file should be. The page file must be large enough to contain the memory data."

http://www.howtogeek.com/196672/windows-memory-dumps-what-exactly-are-they-for/

 

[AsRock]

i run with my swap file off because i have 32 gigs of ram (way more than i can make use of) and use a small 126 ssd boot/system drive.. windows taking up a huge chunk of that for a swap file that will never get used makes no sense..

the more real ram you have the more drive space windows takes up for its swap file it should never have to use.. many years ago it mattered now with ram as cheap as it is its just a waste of hard drive space..

hard drives are also cheap but solid state drives not so much.. plus i like a small easy to back up operating system.. mine weighs in with all the apps i need at around 23 gig.. a virgin windows 10 install can be around 16 gig.. or in my case left to windows around 35 gig.. he he

mostly its best just to leave windows alone.. the only important thing is to make sure you have enough real ram so that windows never has to use its swap file.. most people think it serves some essential purpose but it dosnt.. its just there cos its always been there.. he he

trog

ps.. for what its worth i have enough ram to load my entire operating system into and still have plenty to spare.. my operating system at 23 gigs would easily fit into my ram at 32 gig.. i even bought a ram drive to try and do something like this but so far i havnt been able to.. i would like everything i commonly use to be loaded into ram.. or at least a big chunk of it.. but it dosnt seem possible..

And if it's on auto how much space it take on a win10 box using 32GB ?, As i know with 16GB it's only 2.4GB although i am sure there is cases it's different.

 

[Damocles]

Well, I have 16GB of RAM so my page file is turned off. Less reads and writes to an SSD drive and system is faster since it's (let's say) forced to use RAM.

 

[P4-630]

Well, I have 16GB of RAM so my page file is turned off. Less reads and writes to an SSD drive and system is faster since it's (let's say) forced to use RAM.

A while ago I was reading somewhere that some applications crash without a pagefile, don't know about games though.

 

[Disparia]

A while ago I was reading somewhere that some applications crash without a pagefile, don't know about games though.

It's not that they insta-crash upon opening or anything like that, it's that the OS can't commit anymore memory to the applications asking for more and chooses something to die.

 

[RejZoR]

I'm using 16MB which is the recommended minimum. I've also set BSOD dumps to be minidumps only. This way I still have the debugging capability on BSOD's, but the system is running everything from RAM. If you turn off pagefile, you won't get any memory dumps and that can suck sometimes if you're trying to figure out why something is crashing.

 

[Toothless]

It's not that they insta-crash upon opening or anything like that, it's that the OS can't commit anymore memory to the applications asking for more and chooses something to die.

That's a fairly grim way to put it.

"Oh no space anymore now you die hehe."

In other news JC3 gave me issues with pf off.

 

[SaltyFish]

Certain programs require a page file to function. For example, the original Company of Heroes requires a page file larger than 768MB (I remember another game requiring a 1GB page file, but I don't recall its name). If you don't have any such programs, you can get by without a page file. Otherwise a 2GB page file should suit your needs. If you want a page file while preserving access speed and SSD life, you can pull shenanigans by putting a page file on a RAM disk.

 

[Disparia]

Certain programs require a page file to function. For example, the original Company of Heroes requires a page file larger than 768MB (I remember another game requiring a 1GB page file, but I don't recall its name). If you don't have any such programs, you can get by without a page file. Otherwise a 2GB page file should suit your needs. If you want a page file while preserving access speed and SSD life, you can pull shenanigans by putting a page file on a RAM disk.

CoH is a bit of an oddity as it has a built-in check for the presence of a pagefile. That wasn't very forward-thinking for a couple reasons, but I do understand their intention -- to prevent support calls and bad publicity. Luckily it was patched to support the option "-disablepagefilecheck".

 

[Bill_Bright]

Unless you have advanced degrees in memory management AND you are committed and disciplined to regularly check and reset your settings, it is best to let Windows manage it. Microsoft has over 20 years of empirical data on this and has it figured out. If running without a PF when you have 16GB or more of RAM was better, MS would disable it automatically. Why? Because optimizing performance is a priority goal at MS. It is that simple. So MS does not disable it.

If you do, for some reason, decide to manual set your PF, it is NOT a set and forget setting. This is why Microsoft has made the PF size dynamic and not fixed like they did years ago.

Getting by without one is not the same as benefiting from having one. Yes, your computer will run, and probably run fine without one if you have lots of RAM. But there is no evidence anywhere, except with very rare scenarios most of us will never encounter, that running without a PF benefits anything. Forcing Windows to stuff everything into RAM does NOT improve performance. So why delete it? Best it does is create a nice placebo effect.

It is also a fallacy that you will wear out your SSDs. That is just not true - especially with today's generation SSDs which don't suffer from such limitations as first generation SSDs did. In fact, by forcing Windows to open and close files more often (which is what you do when you disable the PF), that will increase wear on the SSDs too.

SSDs are ideally suited for Page Files. See Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives and scroll down to, "Frequently Asked Questions, Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?" While the article is getting old, it still applies - even more so now since wear problems of early generation SSDs are no longer a problem.

 

[Jetster]

Some programs will actually change the size of your page file. I know Samsung Magician does

Bill_Bright
this old man I use to work with use to ask me. "So you think you're smarter than the engineers that built it?" Every time I started messing with something