8gb Ram, low memory warning

Boxxerz · Nov 18, 2015

I have been playing the witcher3 on my 4ish year old budget gaming build.

I have the following parts
i3-2120
Radeon 6850 hd 1gb
8gb (2x 4gb) corsair ram

I can run the game just fine and play just fine with various settings, however, when I tab out and open a web page the computer says im low on memory, asks to close programs, change color sceem ect.. The game only requires 6GB ram and recomends 8gb.

I have page file turned off, however when I open DXDiag it says there is a page file using 2.1gb of my ram!?

now I debated getting another 8 gb of ram, but i feel my build is nearing its end and am not sure its worth doing. would enabling page fileing on my SDD fix my memory issue, and is it a good idea to do that? I was told that it can wear out your SSD rather fast?

PassMark · Nov 19, 2015

Turn the paging file back on.

A page file doesn't 'use' your RAM, it extends your RAM (onto the disk).

There is no good reason to have it off, despite misinformed folk law around turning it off. It doesn't write much to a SSD. Not enough to impact the life in any significant way. In any case if you SSD is already 4 years old it is totally redundant. You shouldn't worry about shaving 1 week of its 10+ year life span.

Boxxerz · Nov 19, 2015

The SDD is only a few months old. The HDD is 4 years old along with the rest of the system. when I bought the SDD it recommended that I turn paging file and indexing off in order to preserve its life..

I heard using HDD for paging slowed gaming down tho, how much with it affect the SDD? ( i plan to keep the sdd and transfer it to the new build if/when I do it)

Boxxerz · Nov 19, 2015

What I read was that people turn it off because the HDD reads slower that the RAM and it slows down your system when gaming. however, when I installed my SSD it told me that if you have more than 8GB of ram to turn paging off and it will use the ram in order to save the life of the SSD.. tho, it would seem my system is using more ram that I thought it would..

Is there a way to dedicate the RAM to the games and the page file on HDD to the web browser?

PassMark · Nov 19, 2015

Boxxerz :

SSDs often have MTBF of over 1 million hours (calculated at maybe 20GB of writes per day). This means it is 114 years before the average drive will fail.

It will vary from case to case, but if you have enough RAM, your paging file will hardly be touched. I am betting you don't get near the 20GB per day (on average) from all the activity on your machine. (You can often check via the disk SMART data in fact)

Another example. Samsungs warranty period on some drives is 5 years or 150TB written.
150TB is 20 years of writing to the drive at 20GB per day.

Mark_1970 · Nov 19, 2015

PassMark :

Page file continuously writes to ssd , does not impact it's life? I don't agree

Mark_1970 · Nov 19, 2015

PassMark :

Boxxerz :

SSDs often have MTBF of over 1 million hours (calculated at maybe 20GB of writes per day). This means it is 114 years before the average drive will fail.

It will vary from case to case, but if you have enough RAM, your paging file will hardly be touched. I am betting you don't get near the 20GB per day (on average) from all the activity on your machine. (You can often check via the disk SMART data in fact)

Another example. Samsungs warranty period on some drives is 5 years or 150TB written.
150TB is 20 years of writing to the drive at 20GB per day.

Do your maths, these statements are all wrong

Mark_1970 · Nov 19, 2015

could just pause game or save and exit b4 attempting the browsing, or buy ram so u can do this. Maybe it's saying graphics memory is too low, i would agree

SinxarKnights · Nov 19, 2015

Boxxerz :

If you are really that concerned about using your SSD you can move the pagefile off the SSD and onto the HDD. Either way it has to be on for the error to go away. It used to be recommend to turn off the paging file due to the low durability of SSDs at the time. Any modern SSD has no issues running a pagefile with sufficient system RAM. It is when there is too little RAM installed is when there is a problem. Windows 8 and 10 are designed with SSDs in mind. They do not write data constantly to disk.

Here is something I found that explains how to move the pagefile to the HDD: https://askleo.com/what_is_pagefilesys_and_can_i_move_it/

Mark_1970 · Nov 19, 2015

SinxarKnights :

Boxxerz :

If you are really that concerned about using your SSD you can move the pagefile off the SSD and onto the HDD. Either way it has to be on for the error to go away. It used to be recommend to turn off the paging file due to the low durability of SSDs at the time. Any modern SSD has no issues running a pagefile with sufficient system RAM. It is when there is too little RAM installed is when there is a problem. Windows 8 and 10 are designed with SSDs in mind. They do not write data constantly to disk.

Here is something I found that explains how to move the pagefile to the HDD: https://askleo.com/what_is_pagefilesys_and_can_i_move_it/

A page file needs to be quick otherwise it becomes a bottleneck Doing so on a secondary hdd is not ideal

SinxarKnights · Nov 19, 2015

Mark_1970 :

Your ignorance on the subject is entertaining. Tell us more about it.

Mark_1970 · Nov 19, 2015

SinxarKnights :

You cannot deny that a pagefile being quicker working on SSD rather than a HDD. also doing without it and increasing ram as being a solution

SinxarKnights · Nov 19, 2015

Mark_1970 :

It only matters if there is not enough RAM installed (generally 4GB or less in modern PCs). The issue is you cannot disable the pagefile in this manner. It is required and will forcefully create a tiny one just so the OS can run itself. In Windows XP and earlier versions you could in fact disable the pagefile if you had a large amount of RAM. Since Windows Vista, the memory management system no longer works like this.

Mark_1970 · Nov 19, 2015

SinxarKnights :

Win 7 64

performance options/virtual memory, tick no page file. Cant be done pfffft
Only affect it won't save info on pc errors to review later. Pagefile and system cache are different , system cache needs to be there

PassMark · Nov 19, 2015

Mark_1970 :

No one mentioned cache.

The main effect of turning off the paging file is to introduce random and unpredictable errors into a system when the RAM gets a bit low. Instead of the machine just running a bit slow for a few seconds, you get errors, crashes, warnings, which in turn can sometimes then lead to random data corruption.

What you are saying is that it is better to have the machine crash instead of being a bit slow. If you are paging to disk too much, then you add more RAM. You don't turn off the paging file because you decide that it is being used too much.

If you have enough RAM, then the paging file doesn't significantly impact the life of a modern SSD.

Mark_1970 · Nov 20, 2015

PassMark :

I never said he should disable pagefile, only disputed with you that you could because you said you flat out can't

I would make it larger on the SSD / + more ram maybe. or pause game while browsing. You buy fast gaming ram, you extend onto HDD pagefile this just seems that it may impact those fast memory operation a little slower

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