Turn Virtual Memory off with 8gb ram?

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rkaye

rkaye

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Is it ever recommended to turn virtual memory off (for faster system performance)?
• With 8gb ddr2 ram, running XP64
What about:
• With 8gb ddr2 ram, running Vista64 with a fast 4gb ReadyBoost device?

[Usage includes gaming]
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• OS: 64bit XP SP3
 
Solution
J
Leave your page file alone.
Changing it or turning it off does nothing to improve performance. This was an old trick way back in the Win 95/98 days when it would have cost you thousands of dollars to buy a couple gig of memory. If you could afford it, then turning it off was supposed to help some, as Windows didn't manage memory, processor usage, or the pagefile as well as it does now. It was also a fact that hard drives were mud slogging slow compared to todays drives. All this no longer pertains or makes any sense if you are running Windows XP or later, and halfway modern hardware.
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rkaye

rkaye

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While thinking about this question I also am wondering about this scenario:
• Using a small-capacity SLC SSD exclusively for holding the windows swap file/virtual memory?
 
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mikrev007

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In layman's terms, virtual memory is the pagefile. The settings tab in Windows also calls it virtual memory.
 
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daship

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Yor question was answered in your other thread. How many times to you got to ask before you listen to someone who knows from experience.
Pagefile is only required on 2G or less ram, anything over 2G turn it off.
 
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theAnimal

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There are applications which require a page file, so one may be created even if disabled. There is no performance benefit to disabling it.
 
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mikrev007

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Can you name one?

Applications cannot talk to the pagefile, so as long as there is enough free ram ...
 
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mikrev007

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That must have been because you were low on ram. They can run fine without a pagefile.

An application just allocates a chunk of memory. The application doesn't know whether a chunk of memory is mapped to physical ram or the pagefile (it can request it to always be in physical ram, though). The pagefile is internal to the memory manager.
 
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jitpublisher

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Leave your page file alone.
Changing it or turning it off does nothing to improve performance. This was an old trick way back in the Win 95/98 days when it would have cost you thousands of dollars to buy a couple gig of memory. If you could afford it, then turning it off was supposed to help some, as Windows didn't manage memory, processor usage, or the pagefile as well as it does now. It was also a fact that hard drives were mud slogging slow compared to todays drives. All this no longer pertains or makes any sense if you are running Windows XP or later, and halfway modern hardware.
 
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rkaye

rkaye

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Ah, this is exactly the answer I was looking for, thanks.
 
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tfn105

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There is a smarter move.

Some programs do use VM irrespective of the amount of available RAM.

What I've done with my 12GB of RAM is to create a RAM disk that is 4GB big, and allocate a 4GB pagefile to that drive. This way, come what may all files are loaded into RAM, and my hard drives aren't needed at all.
 
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iasw61

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Apr 23, 2012
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no you will not be able to turn off the virtual memory off
it is becouse of the fact that microsoft keeps records of error occoured during the normal running of winXP/7 whatver on virtual memory
in case if the system shutsdwn completely you will loode all the records from the ram
micosoft has an idea
they keep records on virtual memory
in case of failure they will retrive it from the hdd itself

all you can do is to keep it low or turn of from control pannel
but it will be running in background

hope you like

iasw61@yahoo.com
http://img.tomshardware.com/forum/uk/icones/smilies/hello.gif
:hello:

 
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Guest

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You're talking *** man.
I've always turned virtual memory off
even on a 1g memory computers.
I've always tested , it's lighter and faster.
 
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rofthorax

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Virtual memory is not the page file, virtual memory is the combination of real memory and the page file.. See memory is cut up into pieces called pages, the size of the page is usually about 4 kilobytes, and so for 8 gigabytes of memory you have about 250,000 of these pages on disk, at least.. And when a page hasn't been referenced in memory, it is swapped out to the pagefile. pages move from disk, to ram, to cpu cache, to cpu internal memory, based on how often they are used.. Least used pages are sent to disk, pages that the system predicts will be needed soon may be loaded into real memory from the pagefile.. You will notice when killing a program it takes a while for the memory to be freed up, that's the system releasing pages that are no longer in use. IF you have a very large cache of real memory, there is no point in having virtual memory turned on, cause almost nothing will be cached out, unless the paging algorithm is excessively frugal. Your virtual memory is at most the real memory plus page file size, but at least the amount of real memory. To be safe the page file should be about 1.5 times the amount of real memory, at least this is what I do for swap space on linux, because if there is not enough swap to swap out the real memory to disk, then your programs will crash due to insufficient storage, in windows you have no control over the pagefile size but in Linux you do.. I guess on windows the page file is variable size, on my machine it is showing about 9.5 gigs and I have 8 gigs of memory. A page fault occurs when the desired page is not in real memory and it has to be loaded from disk.. Thrashing occurs when you have insufficient real memory and pages are constantly being swapped out to the page file, this is why increasing memory is a significant performance boost. And as others have said, virtual memory was really a big deal in the old days when memory was costly and running programs like photoshop that would require gigs of memory to load in large photos, but where only parts of the photo were being seen at once, permitted the unseen/unused parts of the photo to be stored in the disk until they were needing to being seen. Virtual memory also permitted people on system like Unix and Linux to be able to use the same machine without utilizing all the resources on the machine, by cutting up memory into pieces for each user and limiting each users real memory use by some quota.

IT would make sense for those who have SSD's to turn virtual memory off because the life of the disk is determined by the number of writes that are made to disk, and SSD's efficiency deteriorates over time based upon how much data is rewritten.. Relocating the page file to a hard disk may increase the service life of the SSD.
 
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rofthorax

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This would be better than reducing the virtual memory or turning it off.. You can get hardware that permits you to add real memory without utilizing system memory, by having it disguised as hard drive space.. Then copy the pagefile to that.. I don't recall if it retains the stored data, because that would mean it would have to keep memory refreshed even after the computer was turned off.. Also, system restore relies on swap space I think, so that when a machine is put into hibernation, software state is copied to the swap, and the machine is turned off..

 
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Rich Ervin

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You will notice that EVERY person who says it does not work has never tried it, and EVERY person who has tried it says it does work.

It does work, it will improve your system performance, it will not void your warranty, and it will not cause kernel panics.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

Ha ha! Okay, that's how you do it on Mac OS X

But all the same is true for windows. Disable your paging file to increase performance.
The second best performance enhancement is to change the Windows theme to "Windows Classic".

These two tips will turn a Windows dog into a good usable computer again.
 
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