Paging file....

[Qdos]

Just wondered what any of you guys do under XP with your paging file (aka the swap file...) given you can choose to dictate it's size yourself, let Windows manage it, and even choose which partitions and volumes it can span...

If you have 2Gb or more of RAM have you tried running without a page file altogether? Did you notice any improvements in performance as a result of fewer disk caching operations - or a stability nosedive?

I've got a Shuttle SFF rig based on a 3.2Ghz 30 capper Northwood P4 at 800fsb, and with the fairly recent addition of 2Gb of XMS dual channel DIMMs I'm wondering how to finetune page file settings.

Having run for a week without a pagefile at all the system seems no less stable than ever before, shutdowns are a little quicker I suspect - but I was hoping for a perceptible increase in performance owing to fewer disk writes and less background bus activity... but I honestly haven't noticed any damn difference at all...

Curious as to what anyone else does or thinks :?
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[DeCrYpT3R]

had a lot of problems in the past regarding this as i played a game called Navyfield

i increased it to 500mb for each drive and that seemed to sort itself out for that game, but in general i didnt see any other change in performance regarding my system or other games!

hope it helps

[Qdos]

THB the only difference I've noticed going from 768Mb of DDR333 to 2.00Gb of DDR400 (bearing in mind the prior modules weren't pairs and therefore were working as single channel only...) is that I can open more pix in the photoshop area at once - or faster.

I don't game much, but throwing a session of Carmageddon didn't seem any different to my 768Mb experiences of the same...

No difference is noticeable in any other regards, so I feel a little bit like I've been cheated! :evil:

[Qdos]

If only I were a gamer...

All I get to do is mostly fix PC's for other folk... sob...

[pjc]

I've got a dedicated partition on a RAID 0 array for the page file so that it never gets fragmented. I formatted the partition as FAT32, as I heard this would be faster than NTFS. But apparently, if you move the main page file to a different drive, you should still keep a 2-50 MB file on C. I've also read that if you don't have a page file at all, then you end up wasting RAM. Since applications ask for more memory than they require, if you don't have a page file, this results in lots of unused RAM.

[Qdos]

I believe that the Page File doesn't fragment if it's a fixed size, it does not need to be written on a seperate volume to avoid getting fragged out - I am pretty certain it only frags up if you allow Windows to \"Dynamically Manage\" it... which means it's size adapts to the session as the OS sees fit and one minute it might be 350Mb and the next 1.7Gb...

Theoretically when the Pagefile is completely disabled it should free up background hard disk caching, and force the OS into using physical RAM instead (and obviously physical RAM is many times faster than virtual memory...) but - in practice, at least what I seem to be seeing... is that there's no noticeable difference at all for some reason...

In any case, regards the system files fragging up, if you happen to use a decent defragger like Raxco PD then an offline weekly defrag session will cure all that beautifully anyway... :twisted:
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[pjc]

hmm... so does a FAT32 partiton not help then?

It seems that when I disable my pagefile, after restarting, pagefile.sys is no longer there, but task manager still shows there is some pagefile usage going on somewhere. :?

[matt_2k34]

Fat32 is defunked these days NTFS is quickly becoming the standard mainly because...

You can have a file bigger than 4gb with fat32 it gets to this limit gets confused and either crashes or tells you to get ntfs wonderful...


What i do is:

Change the Pagefile from my Windows drive - to my fastest (which is my biggest incidentally) drive...


Because this means windows is looking at two drives - on ports 1 and 3, because aparently ports 1and2, 3and4 are paired on my mobo...

(*cheap aria*)


Gives me a good performance boost in photoshop - especially when \"Healing\" pictures

Also feeds the benefit into gaming slightly- faster load times etc. but no major in game performance diff.


The size depeneds on the size of the drive i normally keep the sizes the same when i change it over drive..


Windows chose that size so it can keep that size

Also i use one drive just for cache and other junk i dont want to keep on my main hdd - this is useful as you have a drive idle most of the time
(cd images, photoshop cache etc. is placed here)


you'll normally find the boost when you try loading many many items (but this works for intel as AMDs are always laggy (in my experience) when loading or utilising multiple applications)

:roll:

[Qdos]

FAT32 gets used on a few of my optical RAM Disks, but definitely not with my hard drives these days - they're mostly way to big for FAT32 to cope with them anyway!

The paging file is a virtual piece of memory that resides on a hard drive, so if it's disabled and Windoze is *forced* to use physical RAM instead it should promote an increase in performance. But no. Nada.

Even when it's got 2Gb of high quality physical space (and 1.5Gb shows as free RAM at the time) - there's still no obvious increase in performance with the exception of photoshop being more capable of juggling larger images faster (which probably has nothing to do with the pagefile anyway as that software is designed to use physical RAM directly).

Presumably the more RAM you have, the less need for a Pagefile. Hence switching off the Pagefile on a PC with just 256Mb or RAM will cause the thing to crash. So why is it as you feed more ram to your DIMM slots that Windows will always try to *increase* the capacity of the pagefile (when dynamically managed by the OS) because that's completely backwards!?!?

Is Uncle Bill suckering us all still? :roll:
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[Gregoroth]

[quote:00ade369b1=\"Qdos\"]a session of Carmageddon[/quote:00ade369b1]

Carmageddon is awesome. HOPING they make another one. Are we talking Carmageddon 1?

Sorry, it's not related to your problem!

[Qdos]

Carma II... the biz'ness...