Windows XP Paging file size

R

Rudager

Gawd
Joined
Oct 31, 2005
Messages
520
WIth 2 gigs of ram is it better to have a small 512mb paging file or a huge 3070mb paging file?
 
I never really see my page file get past the gig barrier unless im running something special. (normally floats around 400mb-600mb) And there isnt exactly anything wrong with running out of virtual memory, cause windows will just give you a dialog telling you that it has increased the size of the paging file. I would suggest that you put the paging file on a seperate physical drive to keep the os drive relatively access free and keep the paging file a fixed size so it doesnt get fragmented so often.

Turning it off isnt such a great idea as you will have alot of junk sucking up memory when playing games that can be offloaded to the hd painlessly. On the other hand if your not a gamer I would suggest turning it off as nothing seems to suck up much memory these days other than games.
 
Can we get a lock on this?

it has been documented that you should leave your PF on. with 2 gigs, I'd trim it down to like 400MB.
 
Fark_Maniac said:
Can we get a lock on this?
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Seconded. It's just going to turn into yet another flamefest, with misinformation and bad advice covering the truth.
 
Fark_Maniac said:
Can we get a lock on this?

it has been documented that you should leave your PF on. with 2 gigs, I'd trim it down to like 400MB.
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Wow...is it really such a huge deal...I mean...it barely affects your life...what pain it is to see on a list of threads...what discomfort it brings
 
I'm not about to censor to what you guys can and can't talk about, unless of course it breaks the rules.

It never hurts to get a discussion going.
 
odoe said:
I'm not about to censor to what you guys can and can't talk about, unless of course it breaks the rules.

It never hurts to get a discussion going.
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Keep your fire extinguisher handy!
 
Rudager said:
Wow...is it really such a huge deal...I mean...it barely affects your life...what pain it is to see on a list of threads...what discomfort it brings
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It can when the topic has been beaten to death, and each subsequent discussion turns into a flame war. Such things can easily be avoided, and that's why the stickies were created.
 
Lord of Shadows said:
What exactly did we do wrong?
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Nothing, per se. It's just that when an issue is raised, it's usually debated until it turns into a flame fest. Then a consensus is made, and it's put into a sticky to avoid future threads about the topic, that always end in flaming.

That's why, when something is made into a sticky, it's best to read that, and not start new threads....especially ones that have gone down in infamy. If the OP had a specific question to ask, great...but it was all answered in the sticky. Those of us who are weary of this topic and still remembering all the bickering before.
 
my personal opinion I see nothing wrong with this thread or it leading to a flame war.. so why lock it down.. some people that are new to using forums dont understand what a sticky is in a forumn so they ask a question in hopes that someone can lead them to the right direction wether it be a sticky of a previously beaten to death subject or just another thread where this matter has been discussed already,..people always jumping the gun thinking something is gonna turn out bad when maybe its someone that dosent know there way around the boards yet and are looking for a lead of some insight by restarting a thread.. they mean no harm.. so power to the man who said no im not locking this thread as long as its not breaking the rules....I know from experience the stickies got reorganized here a while back and I couldnt locate the sysprep sticky anymore for a while.. I asked and was redirected to its new resting place inside of another sticky... I was happy with the response I got..
 
I agree with Lord of Shadows, just watch your task manager to see how much virtual memory you actually use.
 
nomak said:
my personal opinion I see nothing wrong with this thread or it leading to a flame war.. so why lock it down.. some people that are new to using forums dont understand what a sticky is in a forumn so they ask a question in hopes that someone can lead them to the right direction wether it be a sticky of a previously beaten to death subject or just another thread where this matter has been discussed already,..people always jumping the gun thinking something is gonna turn out bad when maybe its someone that dosent know there way around the boards yet and are looking for a lead of some insight by restarting a thread.. they mean no harm.. so power to the man who said no im not locking this thread as long as its not breaking the rules....I know from experience the stickies got reorganized here a while back and I couldnt locate the sysprep sticky anymore for a while.. I asked and was redirected to its new resting place inside of another sticky... I was happy with the response I got..
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No one was accusing anyone of doing anything wrong on purpose. The reason why some of us are weary of things going wrong is because we've been here long enough to know what happens in most threads like this. When you've been here a few years, you'll start predicting how things will turn out as well. I understand the point that the stickies aren't quite as obvious as before, but it's not like they've disappeared. A simple search of the forums on a pagefile turns up tons of threads, very few of which stayed calm. It's a dying art, I realize, but a lot of time can be saved by searching for an answer first. Chances are, if it's a common question, it's been answered recently.

And yes, the advice about the peak usage is correct. That will answer your question about how much of a pagefile is needed. I still believe it should be a static size, but there's no set answer to that question, as it's based on the usage of the computer.
 
I'll explain the reaction.

Most people don't understand paging.
There are a lot of paging threads.
Regulars have had this discussion a lot, so it's a "beat up issue" around here.

So, to the OP. I'd recommend testing to see what your memory requirements. With 2GB RAM and running "standard" apps (no DBs, video editing, <insert random heavy memory app>) you likely have "enough" of RAM, and don't really use you paging file. See the sticky thread for how to see your memory requirements.

Let me repeat that, with "enough" RAM you don't use the paging file much.

Given that, any tweak will not affect performance. Can't imporve what you aren't using.

So why have a page file at all? Because it is being used some, what it's not doing is swapping memory from disk to RAM or from RAM to disk, which is the goal in running w/o a page file. The OS will not swap to disk unless you are running out of available memory, aka you have more in memory than the system has in RAM.

The OS is pretty smart about when to swap. ;)

So how much do you need? As much as the OS wants. ;)
Generally this is a couple of hundred MBs, so 500 is a good round number that will not starve the OS for page file space.
 
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