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I am a new user of WinXP.
This is a new machine and it has plenty of hard drive space so 'wasted' space is currently not the issue.If I had 512 Mb RAM then the Virtual memory would be automatically set for 512 Min and 1.5 Gb Max.
WinXP sets the Vitual memory to 1.5 to 3 times the amount of RAM.I have 1Gb of RAM and the Virtual memory is set by WinXP to 1.5Gb to 3Gb.
If I had 4Gb of RAM then the min swap file would be 6Gb?The current size of my swapfile is 1.5Gb.
Isn't this a little much?
Does it make any sense to allow it to be this large?Is there a general concensus among the XP community with regards to it's Virtual memory and it's settings? eg. If 512Mb RAM or higher then 1x that amount or with 1Gb of RAM or more then no more than 512Mb virtual memory.
Thanks for any input,
Bryan
Let the system manage VM. XP starts of at 1.5 times RAM then makes adjustments as necessary. The fact that 1.5x RAM is allocated, doesn't mean that 1.5X RAM is being used. There are occasions when setting VM yourself may be advantageous, but they are few and far between.
The idea of setting VM yourself is a throw back to Windows 98 who's memory management was not as good.
Stuart
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Actually it's pretty much the accepted practice to allow Win9x to do its own management as well, although it can benefit from enabling 'ConservativeSwapfileUsage' - most (if not all) of the formulae for user defined limiting of the swapfile have been debunked
Give me ambiguity or give me something else
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Ok, so it is the same as it is for Win9x; "let Windows handle it".
Let's say that I have a 10Gb hard drive and I have 4Gb of RAM. I should let Windows take 6Gb of the 10Gb available space for VM.
I can go a long with this plan but it seems rather excessive.
I suppose installing 4Gb of RAM would be excessive too. In this scenario, to gain more HD space, simply remove 3Gb of RAM. :)I will have to see how much VM is used over the 1GB of RAM while editing video to get a better idea of the consumption.
What really caught my eye or interest is the difference when using 512Mb RAM versus 2Gb of RAM. VM (swapfile) would be set at 750Mb versus 3Gb where the min setting of 3Gb far exceeded the max setting of 1.5Gb on the machine with 512Mb RAM.
Would this formula suggest that the machine with 512Mb RAM and a max swapfile size of 1.5Gb (compared to the other) would likely run out of memory at a sum of 2Gb of memory?
It would seem to me (being a WinXP novice) that the machine with the 512Mb RAM would need a much larger swapfile than the machine with the 2Gb of RAM but it is the opposite. The machine with the greater amount of RAM requires a larger swapfile (according to the formula).
I will perform an experiment attempting to use more than the 1Gb available RAM to see how much of the minimum 1.5Gb swapfile I can use. I will post back with my findings.
Thank you for answering my question regarding the general consensus.
Bryan
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HI Bryco,
THIS article (written by the late Alex Nichol, MS-MVP - Windows Storage Management/File Systems) may interest you.
If you know him, this article must have been his last work before he passed away.
i_XpUser
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try setting your page file size to zero
youll have a huge speed increase i havnt used one in years
youll get all types of pagefile opinions here but the only way is to try for yourself
have a goxp pro 3.0gz pent 4 1gb ddr400ram 120GB Hard drive nvida 256 mbx8 video card asus ps4800 mainboard wireless networked dvd+/-rw NO PAGE FILE
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Let Windows manage your pagefile. The best general practice (and the one Windows follows) is to have a pagefile that is 1.5 times the amount of physical RAM in the system. However, if you have more than about 768MB of RAM and are willing to tinker, check out this article.
There are plenty of reasons to keep a pagefile. Removing it will only lead to problems and excessive usage of physical memory. I'm sorry, but I don't see any way you're going to get "a huge speed increase". Nothing good will come from getting rid of the pagefile completely.
Oh, and having 4GB of RAM would lead to a 6GB pagefile. Of course, anyone that has a 10GB drive in a system with 4GB of RAM might have some other issues to deal with :)
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Dr. Nick, Thanks for the link. I now have a better understanding of the presented information within the Task Manager's Performance tab.
"anyone that has a 10GB drive in a system with 4GB of RAM might have some other issues to deal with :)"
LOL, absolutely!
XpUser, the link was good, thanks.
"it will assign an initial amount that may be quite excessive for a large machine, while at the same leaving too little for contingencies on a small one."and
"EXAMPLE: Set the Initial page file size to 400 MB on a computer with 128 MB RAM; 250 on a 256 MB computer; or 100 MB for larger sizes."I will leave mine as is for now. I will try the Page File Monitor for Windows XP to see how it works out.
Thanks to all,
Bryan
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Alex passed away? He was just posting over in the MS MVP forums a couple of weeks ago!
There were a number of points we argued about. One was his 4k cluster size for pagefile recommendation based on the supposition that since paging in physical ram is done in 4k incriments that so was disk write/reads. I found out from a couple of MS programmmers that the pagefile is written in 64K writes which actually makes 64K the optimal cluster size for the pagefile.
The other area we disagreed on was Microsoft's recommendation of setting min and max values the same. He says its hogwash for XP. I agree with what MS says and that is dynamic resizing of the pagefile slows down operations whereas setting min and max doesn't.
There is nothing wrong having a huge pagefile. It won't be used at that extent if you have plenty of ram. Would I consider this optimal? No. Optimal is setting up your system not to waste disk space and encourage the OS to do as little disk writes/reads as possible. Paging is the slowest aspect of memory operations.
Proper amount of RAM is critical. After that the proper placement and proper size are factors you have control over.
Using performance monitor or looking at your peak commit charge you can shrink/proper size the pagefile where you waste less disk space yet provide all that the pagefile needs.
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wanderer, look here
This was posted March 9 and as of now have 54 replies and viewed 3570 times since then. He was a real gentleman - everyone miss him :-(
i_XpUser
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ok when i turn my page file on i get a huge SLOW DOWN ON MY COMPUTER so dr nick might be right
i dont see a huge speed increase with it off just a huge speed decrease with it onrotfpml
xp pro 3.0gz pent 4 1gb ddr400ram 120GB Hard drive nvida 256 mbx8 video card asus ps4800 mainboard wireless networked dvd+/-rw NO PAGE FILE
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