What's the best paging file size for windows XP Pro ?

[Vanrick]

my page file size is 2050-2050, whats the best for a 20gig HDD and winxp pro?

[Soulburner]

Wow you need to trim that page file down!

Mine is set for 100-800 and its optimal for me.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

:toast:

[Vanrick]

Originally posted by Soulburner
Wow you need to trim that page file down!

Mine is set for 100-800 and its optimal for me.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

:toast:


well ok lol, I'll prolly go with 100 - 800 hehe !!!! but my default before on the minimum was 766 - 1500 something, should I keep it to default?

Also with 100 - 800 does your comp seem to slow down after playing a big game like bf1942?

[Soulburner]

No actually its the fastest setting ive ever used, it comes out of games very snappy and my memory is managed very well.

I have mine set at 100-100 on the partition with the OS, and 100-800 on the C drive. That way as soon as it goes over 100mb the page file is managed all from a seperate physical disk which is faster than making the head of the disk seek for files on the same drive as what you're using for other things.

Coupled with XP registry tweaks for speed and memory management it works very well. Check out that guide to see what works best for you.

[faruquehabib]

how do you change the page file setting??

[Vanrick]

Originally posted by Soulburner
No actually its the fastest setting ive ever used, it comes out of games very snappy and my memory is managed very well.

I have mine set at 100-100 on the partition with the OS, and 100-800 on the C drive. That way as soon as it goes over 100mb the page file is managed all from a seperate physical disk which is faster than making the head of the disk seek for files on the same drive as what you're using for other things.

Coupled with XP registry tweaks for speed and memory management it works very well. Check out that guide to see what works best for you.

I have hyperX PC3200 memory aswell 2 x 256, what registry, memory tweaks have you done...sorry to be a bugger but I hate it when it takes so long just to load certain programs and especially when comming out of big games like bf1942 my comp seems to have lost all it memory.:eek:

[Soulburner]

Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced > Change

Go to Tweaktown.com and do a search for XP Tweaks. Go through the Guides Part 1 and 2, you will find them there.

[corrupt]

Don't use a page file at all never have, if you have atleast 512mb of ram there's no real reason to use it since ram is always faster than you HD. I've done many tests and I have never seen a advantage from using a paging file.

[Vanrick]

Originally posted by corrupt
Don't use a page file at all never have, if you have atleast 512mb of ram there's no real reason to use it since ram is always faster than you HD. I've done many tests and I have never seen a advantage from using a paging file.

So should I disable page file?, since I only have 512 ram and a 20gig HDD.

[corrupt]

Try it and see what you think I only have 512mb's of ram and works great here.

[Vanrick]

Originally posted by corrupt
Try it and see what you think I only have 512mb's of ram and works great here.

After playing a game like bf1942 does your computer seem to slow down? Does the paging file system have an effect on programs starting slow?

[mluckey]

If you run without a swap file, you could run into problems and crashes if you have with excessive memory usage.

A better idea is to run a fixed sized swap file (to prevent fragmentation), and set it to a reasonable size. If you have 512 mb of RAM or more, then a couple hundred MB is fine. For a system with 256 mb, then 500 or so mb may be necessary. I monitored my setup for a couple of days, using the system performance monitor, and saw that I only dipped into the swap file occaisionally, and even then, never more than a hundred MB. I then set the swap file to 300 Mb - 300 Mb, and never looled back.

For those with over 1 Gb RAM, then disabling the swap file may be best.

[Soulburner]

Originally posted by mluckey
If you run without a swap file, you could run into problems and crashes if you have with excessive memory usage.

A better idea is to run a fixed sized swap file (to prevent fragmentation), and set it to a reasonable size. If you have 512 mb of RAM or more, then a couple hundred MB is fine. For a system with 256 mb, then 500 or so mb may be necessary. I monitored my setup for a couple of days, using the system performance monitor, and saw that I only dipped into the swap file occaisionally, and even then, never more than a hundred MB. I then set the swap file to 300 Mb - 300 Mb, and never looled back.

For those with over 1 Gb RAM, then disabling the swap file may be best.
Actually no, setting the same min/max is a common misconception, read the article I posted.

[saaya]

thx soulburner!

[madwelshboy]

Hi all,

I have generally found that for systems with 512mb or less of RAM, a page file is usefull (as games like UT2003 on high res etc can take up loads of mem), for these systems I use a fixed pagefile of 1.5x my systems mem (eg for 256mb RAM = 400mb page file). But for systems that have over 512mb mem ie 1gig like mine, I totally disable pagefile, it does speed things up dramatically for me anyway.
Hope this helps.

[st0nedpenguin]

I personally run with a 1.5Gb page file, I tend to run a lot of rendering and Photoshop, so it makes sense to have one, and I may as well have it a decent size, I have about 7Gb free on this Windows XP partition anyways.

I wouldn't recommend disabling the page file altogether myself, it's Windows error message hell if you run out of physical RAM, and it has a tendency to cause all kinds of little problems in the future, in my experience.

And for the argument about fixed vs variable size pagefiles, it's not that much of an issue having a variable sixed one with an NT based OS, but I would prefer a non fragmented pagefile myself, so I use a fixed size one.

[Rob]

What's the idea size for Win2k?

[mluckey]

Originally posted by Soulburner
Actually no, setting the same min/max is a common misconception, read the article I posted.

Link? Search came up with thousands of hits.

Also, unless you miscalculate your needs and hit the upper limit of a fixed swap file, you won't have any issues. If you want total safety, then leave the cap off. The performance hit is most likely swallowed by XP doing other crap anyways, so it won't matter.

[Soulburner]

Well I use Diskeeper, and it keeps the Page File defragmented.

This setting is definetely better than a fixed size in my experiences.

[CSOFT]

If you got a ton of ram just make a "ramdisk" using "ramdisk" :D and put your page file on it :D

[JoeBar]

Originally posted by Soulburner
Actually no, setting the same min/max is a common misconception, read the article I posted.

I would also like to learn more about this.
Can u pls post a link?

[KAIN]

Originally posted by Soulburner
Wow you need to trim that page file down!

Mine is set for 100-800 and its optimal for me.

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

:toast:
I would guess that is the article :up:

[Soulburner]

Yup that's the one.

Try out those recommendations and see how you like them.

[JoeBar]

Thanks for the link m8! :)
I will try your recommendations.

[CSOFT]

100-800 worked better then 768, 100 did not work as good, 0 worked pretty good but windows changes it to 2mb and i get a message everytime I boot up saying i got not pf. (on 2k)

[mluckey]

I read the article, tried many different settings, including no swap file at all. None made a significant difference. I tired IOPageLockLimit enabling, at various settings, and no differences, and tried disabling the paging executive, which showed no statistical differences. I changed the number of system pages from default (on this system) 7b000, to FFFF, and no changes. I set it to FFFFFF and no changes.

It seems to me that the only significant repeatable change was the LargeSystemCache enable.

I guess that the XP engineers did their homework.

[Soulburner]

The tweaks won't make any changes in any benchmarks. They will do nothing for 3DMark especially. They just make windows and everything a little faster and more responsive.

[Albigger]

I have also tried many different configurations of pagefiles sizes and tweaks, and none so far have seemed to make a noticeable difference in everyday use for me.

I did experience problems when trying to run without a pagefile when some programs (Pro-Engineer) require one.

I also do a lot of FEA and CAD analysis on this machine, so I have 2 separate ones (one on XP partition, one on separate partition) and have about 2 gigs total pagefile.

I'm runnin winXP with 512mb Ram (if I had it my way, I'd do about 2 gigs of RAM with a virtual Ramdisk and a very small pagefile)

I will look into that article link that was posted - haven't read it yet.

on a side note - is there anyway to actually make windows use all of your physical ram before using the pf? In my short experience with linux, it would ALWAYS only use my RAM, while windows seems to always use at least ~80 megs of pf even when I have 250-350 megs of physical ram left??

[Soulburner]

Try out some XP tweaks for memory management.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management

DisablePagingExecutive=1
SecondLevelDataCache=(enter # here, in decimal, mine is 512)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

EnablePrefetcher=5 (this has to do with startup but is a good one nontheless)

[st0nedpenguin]

Originally posted by Soulburner
SecondLevelDataCache=(enter # here, in decimal, mine is 512)

Does this tweak actually make any diference?

I read about it a while ago, but also read that it doesn't actually make any difference, if it does though, I'll give it a shot. :D

[Soulburner]

I don't know where it helps but it isn't 3DMark01.

[Gleep]

Originally posted by Soulburner
Actually no, setting the same min/max is a common misconception, read the article I posted.

Unless I missed something in that article it made reference to this misconception but never did explain why it was a misconception. If you have lots of free space (which most do thanks to 100+GB drives) setting your pagefile to large size both (both min and max) you will avoid pagefile fragmenation while minimizing the chance of a system crash due to lack of memory space. The arguement for having a smaller minimum setting than your maximium is valid only if you have limited drive space. Removing pagefiles from your system entirely is inviting system problems no matter how much ram you have, the fact is that Windows XP (and other windows version before it) have been designed to always have a pagefile and removing that file causes a bluescreen when the system runs out of physical memory. The thought that 512MB of ram can hold the latest games (with memory leaks) and the OS at the same time is laughable. I have 1GB of ram and a mmorpg idle in the background as I'm typing this, the game is using 508,696KB and everything else (Windows, IE, Email, iTunes) is using another 200MB. I have found that setting the pagefile to at least 500MB allows for unexpected memory use. FYI, my pagefile is 1GB.

[geniusjester]

Originally posted by Soulburner
I have mine set at 100-100 on the partition with the OS, and 100-800 on the C drive. That way as soon as it goes over 100mb the page file is managed all from a seperate physical disk which is faster than making the head of the disk seek for files on the same drive as what you're using for other things.


Sorry to bring back such an old post but i couldnt find one with the right info that i was looking for. Right now i have my OS on a 30gb partition and the rest is setup for games/apps on a raid 0 setup. I then have a 40gb on the IDE channel which is setup as a 3gb swap file partition and the rest for backup data. I have tried to set up my swap file like yours where i have 100-100 on my OS partition and then 100-800 on my swap file partition. Whenever i run intense graphics games or prime95 i get low virtual memory warnings and winxp increases the limit on the 100-100 OS swap file size. I dont even think it runs into the dedicated swap file partition. How do i check if it is or not? I dont get what to do to not get this warning and set it up right. Any suggestions?

[Stang_Man]

running without a page file, in windows.... is suicide.

[Soulburner]

Originally posted by Stang_Man
running without a page file, in windows.... is suicide.
True that.

Don't know about the virtual memory warning, I get the same thing. Haven't figured out how to make it stop doing that yet.

[Johnny Knoxvill]

around 512MB depending on the memory, does the page file size have an effect on overclocking? :banana:

[Slickthellama]

nope johnny, people just dont know how to use any other section beside xtreme overclocking :stick:

[Gleep]

Originally posted by geniusjester
Sorry to bring back such an old post but i couldnt find one with the right info that i was looking for. Right now i have my OS on a 30gb partition and the rest is setup for games/apps on a raid 0 setup. I then have a 40gb on the IDE channel which is setup as a 3gb swap file partition and the rest for backup data. I have tried to set up my swap file like yours where i have 100-100 on my OS partition and then 100-800 on my swap file partition. Whenever i run intense graphics games or prime95 i get low virtual memory warnings and winxp increases the limit on the 100-100 OS swap file size. I dont even think it runs into the dedicated swap file partition. How do i check if it is or not? I dont get what to do to not get this warning and set it up right. Any suggestions?

Disable the swap file on the OS partition and set it to 1gb on the swap partition. With a seperate drive for backup and swap file there is no reason to have the OS swapping to it's own partition.

[geniusjester]

Originally posted by Slickthellama
nope johnny, people just dont know how to use any other section beside xtreme overclocking :stick:

yea yea..i know it has NO effect on OC'in..but i didnt start this thread either. I actually searched for my answer and this is one of the few threads about it, so i figured id ask. Anyway..Soulburner, when you get that warning does it say that its going to increase the file size for you as well? Even though i get that warning does it still end up using the page file i have setup elsewhere?

[Soulburner]

Originally posted by Gleep
Disable the swap file on the OS partition and set it to 1gb on the swap partition. With a seperate drive for backup and swap file there is no reason to have the OS swapping to it's own partition.
That sounds right to me, but that website recommends having a small amount on the OS drive.

It says it is going to increase the size of the PF, and it does. I'm gonna try something different for the night and see how it goes.

[Çhrist0ph]

so does having a huge swap file hurt performance or is it just unecessary?

sometimes, after a fresh install of winxp, i would forget to increase my swap file size from only a few hundered mb's. The first time i would play Bf1942, it would be super jerky until i made my swap file 2048 mbs.

[G|-|oST]

Ultimately, if and only if you have enough RAM (as in more that 1 Gig), you can go without swap-file, and it WILL be faster, but only in certain applications - photoshop being prime example. When you configure photoshop you can specify how much RAM it is allowed to use for its functions, and basically the more the better. If you are working with a large image, you don't want to wait while winblows moved it in and out of your HD, even a fast SCSI one. RAM is obviously waaaay faster for fast read/writes. But of course, RAM is much more expensive than HD space.

[Peen]

since im told 100-800mb is best, if i had 2 drives, would it be faster to set each one for 50-400?

and also, something kind of funny...

i set my 64mb Scandisk flash card for 10-20mb lol!

[wimpie007]

I get "short on virtual memory" error all the time when I play games when running 512mb, weird stuff...

[Soulburner]

Originally posted by G|-|oST
Ultimately, if and only if you have enough RAM (as in more that 1 Gig), you can go without swap-file, and it WILL be faster, but only in certain applications - photoshop being prime example. When you configure photoshop you can specify how much RAM it is allowed to use for its functions, and basically the more the better. If you are working with a large image, you don't want to wait while winblows moved it in and out of your HD, even a fast SCSI one. RAM is obviously waaaay faster for fast read/writes. But of course, RAM is much more expensive than HD space.
Don't disable the page file in XP. The OS will always require a page file or you WILL eventually run into a BSOD.

And yeah, its faster alright...+1fps per test in 3DMark2001...:rolleyes: