Pagefilling

[kyhillbilly2184]

here is my specs
OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7600 Build 7600
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name MARK-PC
System Manufacturer LENOVO
System Model IdeaCentre K300
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Pentium(R) Dual-Core CPU E5700 @ 3.00GHz, 3003 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date LENOVO 58KT36AUS, 10/14/2009
SMBIOS Version 2.5
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7600.16385"
User Name Mark-PC\Mark
Time Zone Eastern Standard Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 8.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 6.82 GB
Total Virtual Memory 8.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 6.63 GB
Page File Space 0 bytes

Will i get better performance without pagefile, or anyone have a conclusion to how much pagefile i need?

 

[sminlal]

Whether you have a pagefile or not isn't really so much a performance issue. There are really only two possibilities:

- you don't ever run enough programs / have enough files open at any one time to require more than 8GB of physical memory. In this case the pagefile will hardly be used and it's performance impact is going to be pretty minor.

- you DO run programs or have enough files open to require more than 8GB of physical memory. In this case, if you DON'T have a pagefile your system will hang.

If the former is the case, then you could eliminate your pagefile altogether and you probably wouldn't see much, if any, difference in performance. But you would want to be careful that you never get anywhere near 8GB of physical memory usage before you'd do that.

 

[kyhillbilly2184]

Whether you have a pagefile or not isn't really so much a performance issue. There are really only two possibilities:

- you don't ever run enough programs / have enough files open at any one time to require more than 8GB of physical memory. In this case the pagefile will hardly be used and it's performance impact is going to be pretty minor.

- you DO run programs or have enough files open to require more than 8GB of physical memory. In this case, if you DON'T have a pagefile your system will hang.

If the former is the case, then you could eliminate your pagefile altogether and you probably wouldn't see much, if any, difference in performance. But you would want to be careful that you never get anywhere near 8GB of physical memory usage before you'd do that.

ok thanks alot, i do alot of gaming didnt no if it would help the performance or not

 

[w33dg0d]

Try making your pagefile 1.5x the amount of your system RAM (12GB), this will stabilise the use of it more.
Also run a Memory Diagnostic to confront any issues you may be having regarding memory.

 

[sminlal]

Try making your pagefile 1.5x the amount of your system RAM (12GB), this will stabilise the use of it more.

The "RAM X 1.5" rule is an old one from the days when most people were rather marginal on the amount of memory they have installed. With 8GB of RAM it would mean a 12GB page file giving a total virtual memory capacity of 20GB - but it's awfully unlikely that someone would be running programs that require so much virtual address space. Only a relatively few programs that use 64-bit addressing can even get beyond 2GB apiece, and most get nowhere near that. And there's no benefit to having excess space in the page file - it doesn't "stabilize" anything. At best it gives you more safety margin in case you need to run a lot of stuff at once. But again - 20GB of virtual space? A waste for all but the most extreme superuser (and such a superuser would be a LOT better off getting more than 8GB of RAM).

It's a lot better to base your pagefile needs on what you use, not on an arbitrary rule. To find out what you need, run Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc), select the "Performance" tab, and watch the memory graph while you run the very biggest combination of concurrent programs and open files / web pages that you ever use. The memory graph tells you how much memory that actually uses - if you multiply that number by 1.5 (as a suggested safety margin, use another value if it makes you more comfortable) then whatever the result is less the amount of RAM you need.

For example, let's say the OP measures his peak worst-case memory usage at 6GB. Multiplying that by 1.5 gives 9GB as a maximum amount of RAM with a generous safety margin built in. If he already has 8GB of RAM, that means he'll probably be just fine with a 1GB page file.

If the maximum amount of memory used by all programs in the worst measured case X 1.5 is less than the amount of physical RAM you aleady have installed, then you probably don't need a page file at all.

 

[sminlal]

It can be dangerous to disable the page file if you haven't verified that programs you run don't exceed your physical RAM. In tests I ran on Windows 7 without a pagefile, when I used up all of the installed RAM it caused the system to hang while it waited for some free memory to become available.

The good news was that the system didn't crash, and I was able to use Task Manager to kill the program that was hogging memory. When I did that the system resumed operating normally.

 

[kyhillbilly2184]

thanks alot peeps for all the help

 

[sminlal]

Windows never reallly disables the pagefile.

Windows doesn't do that on it's own. But if you do this:

Start -> Right-click "Computer" -> Properties
Click "Advanced System Settings"
Click the "Advanced" tab
Click the "Settings..." button in the "Performance" section.
Click the "Advanced" tab
Click the "Change..." button in the "Virtual Memory" section

...and select each drive and set it to "No paging file", then there will be no pagefile on any drive and no paging.