Virtual Memory (revisited) - DDR3

i had this question in mind for a very long time. I havent able to ask users with a huge Stash of RAM.
It's about the virtual memory, in the past, virtual memory is enable on the HD side, but it seems that some of us has a huge RAM deposit, i wonder if there any users who try assigning all the virtual memory to the RAM?

With these DDR3 memory now, the bandwidth is getting faster and faster, could assigning the virtual memory to the RAM increase the performance or the contrary? in the past, placing all the virtual memory to the RAM lowers the performance, i wonder will it still stands this day.

anyone care to test it? :)

I think a lot of users now are just disabling their page file. I have 8gb of ram and have disabled my pagefile with 0 issues.

so did you test the difference between disabling it and enabling it? i'm curious to know if there's any difference ... it used to be an issue of disabling it
sadly i do not have any 8gb to test it myself :(

ram is faster than hdd any day, ever since ddr1 at 333(effective) with decent timings

IIRC, 32-bit programs would only address up to 2GB of memory, the rest goes to the pagefiles. So in order to actually make pagefile disappear is to make a ramdisk. Or maybe I'm wrong. Anyone here that has enough ram to try this out? 4GB is a no-no.

This is an interesting question. I've been wanting to try it out myself(had issues with disabling pagefiles when I have 1 GB of RAM and playing counter-strike before!).

Putting a page-file on a ram drive is foolish. It totally defeats the purpose of a page-file, wastes RAM that could be otherwise used for something useful, and reduces performance slightly.

Keep the page-file on a drive (preferably a fast, rarely used one). It won't be used much unless its needed, and if it is needed, you'll be glad you have it.

Or, disable it.

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Originally Posted by i found nemo

ram is faster than hdd any day, ever since ddr1 at 333(effective) with decent timings

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Ram has always been vastly faster than drives from the same era, and by always, I mean way before DDR.

Also, most SDR is still faster than all but the fastest SSDs.

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Originally Posted by dcl

I think a lot of users now are just disabling their page file. I have 8gb of ram and have disabled my pagefile with 0 issues.

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I used to have 4GB, now I have 6GB, I haven't used page file for ages.

I've disabled pagefile on my system, but for some reason, the performance was worse. Boot took slightly longer and applications took even longer to load. Not much but i could notice it. So i've enabled it back and left it at it. Works great at stock settings.

How i currently handle virtual memory is use my second drive even though it is slower, because it is just for storage and sits idle and if my page-file is being utilized then my first drive is more than likely active.

I also partition the second drive so the page-file has a spot reserved on the fastest part of the disk.
I wouldn't imagine there being a performance advantage to turning it off ,especially since you may rarely use it.
I would however turn it off if i was running a SSD.

I have thought about this setup also for awhile.

My system has 12gb RAM installed on a EVGA X58 and 965XE cpu using Win 7 64bit.

12gb of RAM is hardly ever touched if at all so much of that RAM is sitting doing nothing.

I have tried turning off the page file but some games or what not require it to be on. What would be the correct page file size then ?

Win 7 recommended page file size is 18418mb LOL !
I have it set to 6gb atm but I think going even lower to say 1 or 2 gb would work fine.

I know 12gb is like a lot of RAM but I had the sticks so why not :)
What else could this extra space be used for then, a RAM Disk I would assume. But could you install programs on that and have it there after you reboot, say a recoverable RAM Disk ?

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Originally Posted by zalbard

I used to have 4GB, now I have 6GB, I haven't used page file for ages.

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hmm .. i guess i had to get more than 4gb to do the trick ... it somehow worsen on 4gb :p:

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Originally Posted by Buckeye

I have thought about this setup also for awhile.

My system has 12gb RAM installed on a EVGA X58 and 965XE cpu using Win 7 64bit.

12gb of RAM is hardly ever touched if at all so much of that RAM is sitting doing nothing.

I have tried turning off the page file but some games or what not require it to be on. What would be the correct page file size then ?

Win 7 recommended page file size is 18418mb LOL !
I have it set to 6gb atm but I think going even lower to say 1 or 2 gb would work fine.

I know 12gb is like a lot of RAM but I had the sticks so why not :)
What else could this extra space be used for then, a RAM Disk I would assume. But could you install programs on that and have it there after you reboot, say a recoverable RAM Disk ?

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from my knowledge, the MS recommended setting is 1.5x of your total RAM size ... splited fairly among the partition/harddisk .. i do not know of other o/s

for MS server, it's 2.5-3x of the total ram size allocated on a reserved partition for page file (although better performance if separated on different partition, but admins uses this for cleaner look and better manageability)


thx everyone for the replies ... i guess it cleared up somehow

Nothing is split among partitions. The pagefile is all on one partition. A pagefile is similar to a *NIX swap space. I run 4GB of RAM on my Phenom rig and I've only seen it fully utilized twice. Installing Crysis and when using PowerISO (it trys to load the entire image in RAM and makes a memory leak...). I've seen it come close to being 100% utilized installing a few other games but actually playing games...

I ran my Pagefile for Win7 v7100 on a separate 768MB partition...

I only run a 512MB page file on my Vista 32-bit install.

I have actually been using "ready boost" with my win 7 x64 and it does make a difference on loading times and shut down, i have 4 gb of ram on my AM3 rig in my sig, i also use ready boost on my 939 opti rig with win7 and xp (can only use ready boost in win7, so you cant use the drive at all when your in xp), anyway when you use ready boost it disables your pagefile, and uses the usb drive to do it, i have an 8gb OCZ Rally in both of them, and it makes a fairly large difference on the the 939 rig with 2gigs of ram, seems to help almost everything load/close, on the AM3 rig like i said it is mostly just with windows starting and shutting down, but also i can do thing on the desktop as soon as it loads instead of clicking on something and having that one short initial pause as windows is still loading a few things, also my drive dosnt seem to get "thrashed" using ready boost like it can sometimes w/o it, the hdd access is a lot less in other words, i would think that assigning your pagefile to a large amount of ram would b WAY faster then a USB drive would ever even think of being

Dragon

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Originally Posted by FireDragon

I have actually been using "ready boost" with my win 7 x64 and it does make a difference on loading times and shut down...

"anyway when you use ready boost it disables your pagefile, and uses the usb drive to do it"

Dragon

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PROVE IT Please.

I'll explain..
A pagefile is created on the USB stick (or other compatible memory); Page file writes are split (duplicated) to the real PF, and the ReadyBoost one. Reads come from the USB stick and if not there, then the HD PageFile.

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Originally Posted by FireDragon

I have actually been using "ready boost" with my win 7 x64 and it does make a difference on loading times and shut down, i have 4 gb of ram on my AM3 rig in my sig, i also use ready boost on my 939 opti rig with win7 and xp (can only use ready boost in win7, so you cant use the drive at all when your in xp), anyway when you use ready boost it disables your pagefile, and uses the usb drive to do it, i have an 8gb OCZ Rally in both of them, and it makes a fairly large difference on the the 939 rig with 2gigs of ram, seems to help almost everything load/close, on the AM3 rig like i said it is mostly just with windows starting and shutting down, but also i can do thing on the desktop as soon as it loads instead of clicking on something and having that one short initial pause as windows is still loading a few things, also my drive dosnt seem to get "thrashed" using ready boost like it can sometimes w/o it, the hdd access is a lot less in other words, i would think that assigning your pagefile to a large amount of ram would b WAY faster then a USB drive would ever even think of being

Dragon

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This is all great, but how is your USB drive faster than your hard drive? Especially for those of us using Raptor's or SSD's, keeping the page file where it is would be a lot faster than any USB drive.

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Originally Posted by EnJoY

This is all great, but how is your USB drive faster than your hard drive? Especially for those of us using Raptor's or SSD's, keeping the page file where it is would be a lot faster than any USB drive.

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Please remember about TIME and development.
1) You identify a problem exists (performance).
2) You design a long term solution, "Design Spec"
3) Then the software has to be written, tested, released.
4) 3 years have now gone by and we have SSD's.

Readyboost wasn't focused to fix performance issues with SSD's; it was to improve laptops and desktops with slow HD's (laptops are/were 5400 RPM) with small amounts of disk cache. So every disk IO was/is a huge perf hit.

There is: ReadyBoot; ReadyDrive (Hybrid HD) and SuperFetch; they all do differrent things at different times to help with user experience and effectively use RAM.

To ALL:
RAM DISKS are stupid, don't use them.
Windows may report memory as "free" or "available" In simple terms; That isn't true, most ram is on the standby list and if pages that were ONCE used for something (for example an EXE/DLL) then those pages are pulled back into the working set of the new or running process and no diskreads will occour.

PageFile(s):
Put the pagefile on the OS partition and do RAM_SIZE+1GB (easy math), so you can create crashdumps for MS if you ever need one, or if you are in "customer improvement"; they are uploaded and analyzed for the crash cause. if 3rd party driver, that company is notified to fix their driver, etc.

HD are so large the space taken up isn't noticed; If it used it isn't used, so who cares if its there; but when it is needed its there for the memory-manager. You don't want to put the system into a thrashing state, whem memory pressure is high. A lot of 3rd party drivers and applications don't handle (NOMEM) being returned; with no page file, virtual address can become fragmented and the MM can't move things around if required.

good answer...:up:

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Originally Posted by EnJoY

This is all great, but how is your USB drive faster than your hard drive? Especially for those of us using Raptor's or SSD's, keeping the page file where it is would be a lot faster than any USB drive.

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You don't understand ReadyBoost do you? It isn't about throughput, it is about read/write speed latency. Readyboost is used to cache files that can then be read instantly when compared to a rotating HDD. It isn't meant to cache an entire application to be read off the USB drive, just frequently used small files. No, I haven't tested it but in theory it should boost performance.

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Originally Posted by [XC] gomeler

You don't understand ReadyBoost do you? It isn't about throughput, it is about read/write speed latency. Readyboost is used to cache files that can then be read instantly when compared to a rotating HDD. It isn't meant to cache an entire application to be read off the USB drive, just frequently used small files. No, I haven't tested it but in theory it should boost performance.

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It doesn't do anything with 'files', it deals in pages.