Paging File - How Should I Set It Up?

[ShadyOrb09]

Hello, I'm looking to change my paging file because people say you should manually set it for best performance. The second reason I'm looking to do this is for games, I play Black Ops, it's really poorly optimized and on some threads people recommend to set it manually, they say it will help with the games stuttering. I was just curious as to how I properly set up mine, people say you shouldn't use recommend size and others say you should.

I'd like an answer from someone who knows what they're talking about, and it'd be awesome if you could explain it to me so I can understand how to do it myself on another computer sometime. I have another question. Should I set the paging file to only the drive with my OS installed on it, or if my game is installed on a different drive should I do it to that one too.

Paging File Information
-----------------------------
Space Available: 884291 MB
Minimum Allowed: 16MB
Recommended: 2169
-----------------------------

The ram I currently have in my computer is 10GB (Odd number I know, but it is correct.)
If you want the rest of my specs ask, I didn't bother listing them besides the ram because I didn't think it'd be important considering this is virtual memory, I do have a fairly beefy system though.

Thank you for reading!

 

[InvalidError]

If you let Windows automatically pick the swapfile size, it will continuously resize and reallocate stuff inside it, which does cause some extra disk activity. On my PC, I simply set it to 4GB-4GB manual.

You need to set the minimum limit high enough that Windows has enough space to accommodate software that make large memory reservations against the swapfile and the maximum high enough to avoid running out of memory. How much that is depends on how much stuff you have loaded and how much memory that stuff uses. For someone who does mostly only one thing at a time, 4GB should be a good enough min-max with 10GB of actual RAM.

I have 32GB of RAM in my PC and the main reason I have a 4GB swapfile is because some of the software I use freaks out when the swapfile is disabled.

 

[ShadyOrb09]

If you let Windows automatically pick the swapfile size, it will continuously resize and reallocate stuff inside it, which does cause some extra disk activity. On my PC, I simply set it to 4GB-4GB manual.

You need to set the minimum limit high enough that Windows has enough space to accommodate software that make large memory reservations against the swapfile and the maximum high enough to avoid running out of memory. How much that is depends on how much stuff you have loaded and how much memory that stuff uses. For someone who does mostly only one thing at a time, 4GB should be a good enough min-max with 10GB of actual RAM.

I have 32GB of RAM in my PC and the main reason I have a 4GB swapfile is because some of the software I use freaks out when the swapfile is disabled.

Thanks so much. Does this actually help with stuttering in games? Seems a little odd that an extra 4GB of virtual memory would do hardly anything, but whatever.

 

[InvalidError]

It isn't the extra swapfile space that helps. It is eliminating all the unnecessary background swapfile management Windows keeps doing that helps. With a fixed size swapfile, Windows doesn't waste as much time periodically resizing the swapfile and rearranging its contents.

 

[ShadyOrb09]

It isn't the extra swapfile space that helps. It is eliminating all the unnecessary background swapfile management Windows keeps doing that helps. With a fixed size swapfile, Windows doesn't waste as much time periodically resizing the swapfile and rearranging its contents.

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for the replies, you're very helpful!