Question about page file size and MSI Afterburner RAM usage monitor

Jamesin_x

Prominent
Feb 19, 2017
28
0
530
Here's a screenshot of two windows I'll talk about below:
http://imgur.com/a/TCkSW

I have 8 GB of RAM.

First question: why is Afterburner showing 16 GB as maximum? Isn't the maximum shown accordingly to real amount of RAM in the system?

Second question: in the left window, why is page file size 1280 MB? Shouldn't it be bigger than RAM size? Or is the actual page file size amount of RAM + this number shown? What exactly do those three numbers mean?

Third question: does the "system managed" setting for page file expand its size as needed? Or does it have a set limit? Why would you set a manual size if the "system managed" setting is adaptive?
 
Solution
1. Pagefile size is only tangentially related to physical RAM amount.
2. "Currently Allocated" means exactly that. Currently, 1.2GB allocated for the pagefile.
3. System Managed does indeed adjust as the system needs it.

I've had my pagefile set to 1GB (1024MB) min/max for years. Previously have 16GB RAM, and now 32GB RAM.
Zero performance impact.

For your 8GB of physical, I'd just leave it at System Managed.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
1. Pagefile size is only tangentially related to physical RAM amount.
2. "Currently Allocated" means exactly that. Currently, 1.2GB allocated for the pagefile.
3. System Managed does indeed adjust as the system needs it.

I've had my pagefile set to 1GB (1024MB) min/max for years. Previously have 16GB RAM, and now 32GB RAM.
Zero performance impact.

For your 8GB of physical, I'd just leave it at System Managed.
 
Solution