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Windows XP-Paging File
- Thread starter neptunes
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neptunes said:
What's the best setting for a PC with 376mb ram?
I also heard that it's good to keep it on a seperate drive, what if you don't have two?
In the old days, the recommendation was 2*RAM. Now that advice is not really as relevant. 500MB should be pretty good. Raise it if you ever get an out of virtual memory warning.
D
Deleted member 1235
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maharg said:
thats still valid. For servers anyway, and also you want to set the minimum and maximum size the same, because it uses some grunt growing the page file, so if you have the space make the minimum the maximum.
You don't need to format your drive.
In Partition magic, you can resize your drive so it's smaller, and then it the rest of that data that you trimmed off becomes 'unallocated data', and you can right-click that and create a new logical partition.
I'm not exactly sure about the page file size now, after reading catfish's post.
Why exactly do you want it to be the same size, and not a range?
In Partition magic, you can resize your drive so it's smaller, and then it the rest of that data that you trimmed off becomes 'unallocated data', and you can right-click that and create a new logical partition.
I'm not exactly sure about the page file size now, after reading catfish's post.
Why exactly do you want it to be the same size, and not a range?
D
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Ecrofirt said:
Say you set it to 2gig min and max of 4, (which you will probably never notice a problem) but the theory goes, that if your computer wanted to use say 3.5GB of that, it would use processor time to increase the file size, if it's already 4 GB it doesn't need to do a resize.
I have no idea why that operation is intensive, but Microsoft seems to think it is. Thats also from a Server theory exam, but I'm sure the same applys for workstation.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
because when your gaming and it has to change that range your performance will go to shit
The problem is the page file gets fragmented when it shrinks and expands like that. Setting it to a fixed range means the size is set and never fluctuates. You then defrag the drive and XP "optimizes" it. Basically it makes it contiguous and places it for quick loading. For whatever reason, that no longer means the front of the disk, but I guess it doesn't matter. My suggestions:
Page File set to 512MB (min and max) then defrag using the XP Defrag utility.
You could try other defraggers, but it's been pretty well proven that XP gets the job done and often best. It's why I don't mind the fact that it keeps putting my swap file about about the 1/3 marker on my drive. In the Win95 days, you could have Speeddisk put it right at the front of the drive. Super-fast! I have a gig of RAM, and I only have a 256MB swap file. Actually, I think I'll up that to 512MB. It doesn't make much of a difference really since I never really use the swap really. Hell, I don't think I ever really use more than 600MB of RAM. But it's good to have extra.
PEACE.
Page File set to 512MB (min and max) then defrag using the XP Defrag utility.
You could try other defraggers, but it's been pretty well proven that XP gets the job done and often best. It's why I don't mind the fact that it keeps putting my swap file about about the 1/3 marker on my drive. In the Win95 days, you could have Speeddisk put it right at the front of the drive. Super-fast! I have a gig of RAM, and I only have a 256MB swap file. Actually, I think I'll up that to 512MB. It doesn't make much of a difference really since I never really use the swap really. Hell, I don't think I ever really use more than 600MB of RAM. But it's good to have extra.
PEACE.catfish said:
Server is a completely different matter. For a desktop, the average app working set isn't going to be more than 100MB unless you tend to run a lot of copies of heavy duty software like Photoshop or Visual Studio. For practical use, a grand total of a GB will be good for most people. And unlike a server, you'll be there when it warns you you don't have enough and you can increase the page file size. On a server, you go higher than you need because if allocations fail you're fucked.
The advice about making it a fixed size is good, but putting it on a separate partition on the same physical device will make *absolutely no* difference, aside from reserving the space (and then you might as well make it a fixed size). The reason putting it on another physical device is so that if you have an IO intensive app running at the same time as something that's eating memory, they're not both fighting for the same bandwidth or seeking two different locations on the same drive. For that to be true, they *must* be on different physical devices connected to different IDE channels.
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