Pagefile Size Windows Vista 64-bit with 8GB RAM

[mikeynavy1976]

Surprisingly, I just did a search on this topic and nothing came back I'm curious about Pagefile Size for a Vista x64 machine with 8GB RAM. Right now I have it set at the following:

Hard Drive 1 (Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB) - System OS - 500MB (minimum and maximum)
Hard Drive 2 (Western Digital Raptor 150GB) - System Managed (right now it is around 8GB)

Any recommendations on setting the pagefile size for the 150GB Raptor? I've done searches online and read differing suggestions. Is it better to have "System Managed" or to actually set a minimum and maximum on the 2nd Drive?

 

[auscanzukus]

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-US/Help/596FB57F-CC9D-4AC5-A813-5C0830E9156A1033.mspx

 

[LoneEagle]

With so much RAM, why do you need a Virtual Cache? It slow! It was for system with very little RAM.

I have Vista x64 and 4GB and I'm using 512MB. Lower than that or none caused my system to crash.

Do like me, start low and increase until system is stable.

Let us know what was the best!

 

[mikeynavy1976]

I've read that some programs require use of the pagefile, regardless of how much RAM you have. I guess I'll just leave mine at System Managed.

 

[notherdude]

I've read that some programs require use of the pagefile, regardless of how much RAM you have. I guess I'll just leave mine at System Managed.

You hear advice both ways. Some say turn it off or turn it down to minimum size of 512 meg. Some pretty smart people at Zdnet tell me it's better to let Vista manage it because of some specific ways Vista uses the page file. They were short on specifics but sounded fairly convincing.

 

[GeoMan]

I%u2019ll only tell you what I%u2019ve experienced so far. I%u2019ve been running the same install of Vista 64 on 4 GB ram for the past year with ought a paging file and it%u2019s fine. I use my machine for gaming and photo editing. I%u2019ve never gone up to 4 GB memory usage and I game with everything @ max @ 1920*1200 so it%u2019s u likely you%u2019ll ever use much more ram than that (cept for some video editing, CAD etc). The only problem I%u2019ve had is that Vista will not allow you to use more than 80% of your total memory (RAM plus paging file) so I have had to make a paging file just so I can use all 4GB of my ram and this is only necessary for Crysis. And to clear something up, Vista dose not require a paging file, just because it will populate the paging file when it doesn%u2019t need to does not mean it needs a paging file.

So with 8 GB you have more than enough memory to get away with not having any paging file.


P.S. "They were short on specifics but sounded fairly convincing." I love those non specific but convincing guy's they always know what they're talking about.

P.P.S. Please tell me you got the sarcasm of that...

 

[Scotteq]

I don't recommend turning the page file off completely - Individual applications may still need to use it occasionally because they have their own address/space limitations, independent of the OS. So even if you have way more memory than you are using, a given app could still need to page something occasionally. If the pagefile is shut off completely and therefore inaccessable, that can cause app crashes.

It's true that with a lot of RAM, you can go a long long time and may even never need it. But just in case: 512MB won't hurt anything, and you've covered all the bases.

 

[notherdude]

I%u2019ll only tell you what I%u2019ve experienced so far. I%u2019ve been running the same install of Vista 64 on 4 GB ram for the past year with ought a paging file and it%u2019s fine. I use my machine for gaming and photo editing. I%u2019ve never gone up to 4 GB memory usage and I game with everything @ max @ 1920*1200 so it%u2019s u likely you%u2019ll ever use much more ram than that (cept for some video editing, CAD etc). The only problem I%u2019ve had is that Vista will not allow you to use more than 80% of your total memory (RAM plus paging file) so I have had to make a paging file just so I can use all 4GB of my ram and this is only necessary for Crysis. And to clear something up, Vista dose not require a paging file, just because it will populate the paging file when it doesn%u2019t need to does not mean it needs a paging file.

So with 8 GB you have more than enough memory to get away with not having any paging file.


P.S. "They were short on specifics but sounded fairly convincing." I love those non specific but convincing guy's they always know what they're talking about.

P.P.S. Please tell me you got the sarcasm of that...

I hear you. With 8 gig RAM I had mine off for a long time and then I set it to 512 and I didn't have any particular problems - I don't THINK - but then again maybe the few crashes I had were related. It would take a lot of testing to find out. The guy who told me to leave it on was Ed Bott who is a well known Windows guru and author and the guy who wrote the article linked in an above post. This by no means makes it gospel and I still consider this an open question. On this discussion some others said something about xp 64 not needing the page file and many assumed this would be the case with Vista too but that this was not so. Again details were not provided.

 

[GeoMan]

The only thing that I know of that has to have a pagefile operational in Vista is for memory dumps when it crashes, and who go's back and ever checks those anyway?

I quote from Wikipedia "Paging is usually implemented as a task built into the kernel of the operating system."

 

[Zoron]

Wikipedia isn't exactly the most reliable source of information at times...

You found out the hard way, yes Vista doesn't require a pagefile... but some applications do. Turning it off isn't going to give you much noticable increase in performance... and may result in system instability or "out of memory" errors. Yes, Windows obviously slows down a bit when it starts paging to the hard drive, but in the long run it will help performance and not hurt it.

A small pagefile never hurts. I don't know why some people are so opposed to the idea... especially since it helps more than it hinders.

 

[hester7]

A pagefile is never required for an application to run, as long as there is enough free ram. The pagefile is invisible to applications, and they cannot write to it or read from it. The application doesn't know and doesn't care if a specific memory region is backed by physical ram or the pagefile.

You might have an application (like photoshop) that gives a warning, if there is no pagefile, but it is not required to run.

And maybe, just maybe there exist piss poor applications that checks if one is configured, and quits if there isn't. I've haven't seen one, but cannot conclude that they don't exist.

but in the long run it will help performance and not hurt it.

It can hardly help performance, but it can help if you run out of memory.

 

[byblyk]

I've been running Vista 64 with 4GB of ram for a little over a year now with my page file turned off and i've yet to run into any issue. There is no need for it with 4gb of ram let alone 8gb, it just slows you down.

I've never run into an app that wouldn't run because of not having a page file, all the people saying that some apps require it could you please give me an example of an app that you know needs it because i've never, ever ran into one that did.

 

[Zoron]

Look up... obviously Crysis does. Turning off the pagefile does NOT help performance. You can argue that it doesn't necessarily improve performance (except for when you need the memory), but I can tell you it does nothing to improve it either. It's better to have one than not to have one.

 

[dsharp9000]

main question; if you dont need page file; then why have it as pagefile could be slower; but some are saying it makes no difference which confuses me...if its not slower, then why not page all memory.

 

[Zoron]

The only time a pagefile is "slower" is when Windows it either writing to or reading from it. If you run out of memory and Windows needs to page to the disk, having the pagefile turned off is likely going to crash the app demanding more memory. I'd rather have a temporary slowdown than a crash... but maybe that's just me.

After doing a little more research on MS's site regarding 64-bit... if you have enough RAM installed, you may not need a pagefile. That doesn't mean turning it off will necessarily net you any gains in performance, it just means the file likely won't be used. In that case, a small pagefile still wouldn't hurt, as some apps DO require it. Don't assume that everyone can get by with 64-bit Windows, 4GB of RAM and no pagefile.

Now when you get up 8GB or more, then I'll agree that you might not need a pagefile under most circumstances. However, when 64-bit software that can suck up all that RAM starts appearing... you just may need one again.

 

[dsharp9000]

zoron,

thanks for the information; your posts are usually on the right track and helpful...which i appreciate.

 

[GeoMan]

Sorry Zoron, Crysis does not require a page file, I play it with no page file. What I’ve done is turn off my page file and then I enable it if I get a low memory warning, if you don’t get the warning ( and you won’t with 8GB of ram) then don’t enable the page file. If you don’t have enough memory (RAM and page file) Vista will just close the program using the most memory, this feature is called Resource Exhaustion Detector and Resolution (RADAR). It will also create an error report which you can read to figure out what happened, so if you try and use too much memory, Vista won’t let you and it'll tell you that, it won’t randomly crash on you.

Programs do not go, I want my memory address to be in the last 512 mb of the 3rd memory stick in your system, just as is isn't compulsory for them to be addressed to the page file.

Mikeynavey1976: what will you be doing with this computer though, if it's just plain office, word and excel stuff and games you will likely never go above 4gb memory usage and you may as well have no page file and never get any slowdowns in Vista. If however you're using CAD, GIS, graphics processing software etc. that do require tones of memory you'll have to have a page file, and probably a large one because many applications like the ones I’ve described above edit some huge files and will require more than 4 or even 8GB ram.

You do not have to have a page file so why have it if it's got the potential to slow you down, UNLESS you use applications that require more ram than you have and then you DO need a page file.

 

[notherdude]

Mikeynavey1976: what will you be doing with this computer though, if it's just plain office, word and excel stuff and games you will likely never go above 4gb memory usage

FWIW I have 8 and right now over 5 is being used and all I am doing is surfing. It must be superfetch.

What no one has ever explained to me is why the OS will use a pagefile at all if it has yet to run out of ram. Does it use it anyway just because it is there, even if you have 8 gig of RAM? I assume it does use it if it is there as task manager seems to indicate that. And if so is it filling the pagefile with stuff that otherwise would have gone into ram were the page file not there?And if it does fill the page file what are the chances it will actually use it?

I'm not arguing a point here because I don't know the answers to these questions but I would like to see some actual data on this as opposed to hearing a lot of opinions and oft repeated advice which may or may not apply, or maybe applied to XP but not to Vista.

 

[Zoron]

It depends on the program. 32-bit programs are limited to a process size of 2GB... so one 32-bit program running all on it's own is never going to consume more than 2GB. Obviously, if one program is near that limit and you only have 4GB of RAM installed... then you're probably going to need a pagefile. If you have 8GB installed, then yeah, chances are you probably won't NEED a pagefile... but of course that depends on what you're running.

Of course, if you don't need the pagefile and you have one anyway, you're not going to experience slowdown in either event. If Windows doesn't need to page anything, it's not going to... so the issue of slowdown becomes moot.

Of course, this applies only to 64-bit versions of Windows when running 32-bit software. Once we start seeing 64-bit software, things just might change a bit. Processes aren't limited to 2GB... instead, they have an 8 terabyte limit. Now I can't imagine any process that would need to eat up that much RAM... but certainly 2 - 4GB wouldn't be totally out of the question. That is unless programmers really start getting sloppy with their code.

Getting back to Crysis though... OK, I didn't make myself clear. Crysis itself doesn't require a pagefile, true. However your experience shows that it is possible to run out of memory when using Crysis with 4GB of RAM. Instead of constantly switching the file on and off... it's better to just leave it on and not have to worry about it. If you had 8GB, then you likely wouldn't need a pagefile at all. So, what I meant to say is that yeah, Crysis doesn't require the pagefile, but if you're running 4GB or less then Windows is probably going to want to page to disk at some point... which, in that case, it makes much more sense to have one than not. Again though, this applies to 64-bit Vista... not 32-bit.

 

[hester7]

32-bit programs are limited to a process size of 2GB... so one 32-bit program running all on it's own is never going to consume more than 2GB. Obviously, if one program is near that limit and you only have 4GB of RAM installed... then you're probably going to need a pagefile

I'm not 100% clear on what you mean here. If an application has filled out its 2GB user space, a pagefile won't help anything. It won't be able to allocate more memory beyond this point (unsless you reconfigure the layout of the virtual address space). I take for granted you haven't run out of physical ram at this point.

Another point to make. The upper limit of commited memory is physical ram + pagefile. If you let windows manage the pagefile, this limit can be moved. If you make a static pagefile, it cannot. So 1GB RAM+2GB pagefile (static) gives the same amount of memory to commit as 3GB RAM and no pagefile.

 

[GeoMan]

Hester: the 2GB limit is for any one program, in 32 bit programming a single application may not exceed 2GB memory usage, this is different to the 4GB or whatever that the whole operating system can address to. So let me say that again, a single 32 bit program is limited to 2GB memory usage in Vista/XP 32 bit, but not in 64 bit. This page probably explains better than I do.

As for the upper limit of memory you’re spot on, only thing to add is that Vista may fragment the page file if you let it handle it dynamically, but not if you set it statically yourself.

 

[hester7]

Yes, every program has its own private space (which can be as large as 4GB in 64bit Windows for an 32bit application). But it is not clear to me, if Zoron states that a program can get around this by sending pages out to the pagefile (which it cannot). I have seen this being said in here before

 

[Zoron]

No, I did NOT say that. What I did say that if a program is consuming close to 2GB and you have 4GB installed, then you're going to run out of memory. The 32-bit process can't use more than 2GB, but Windows certainly can... and so can any other program running in the background. If one process is taking up half your RAM, then there's a good chance you'll need a pagefile to avoid out of memory errors. I in no way inferred or intended to infer that a 32-bit process could consume more that 2GB of memory.

 

[dsharp9000]

The release of ATI's 4870x2 video card with 2 gigs of ram brings up an interesting issue relating to anyone using 32 bit vista with 4 gigs of ram and using the 4870x2...you might need that page file as your ram will be reduced to 2 gigs under 32 bit vista. In any event, it seems that 64 bit vista is what everyone should be going to...4 gigs total memory just doesnt seem like enough any more.

 

[hester7]

I think I was also triggered by scotteq's comment above :"Individual applications may still need to use it occasionally because they have their own address/space limitations, independent of the OS. So even if you have way more memory than you are using, a given app could still need to page something occasionally. If the pagefile is shut off completely and therefore inaccessable, that can cause app crashes. "

I thought you were backing that statement. If there is lots of free ram, a crash won't be caused by a missing pagefile.