Hardware Just upgraded my PC...

[Joey Ravn]

2 nice Kingston 1GB 533MHz modules. Upgraded from 2 generic, 512KB 233MHz modules. Now, I'm wondering, how should I setup the virtual memory to have an optimal performance? I currently have 50-50 MB on my main partition, 512-512 MB on my secondary, virtual partition.
Thanks in advance.

 

[kellyan95]

The pagefile? It should be 1.5x the amount of RAM you have. So 3GB....

(Seriously)

 

[superkrm]

2 nice Kingston 1GB 533MHz modules. Upgraded from 2 generic, 512KB 233MHz modules.

kelly is right

congratulations

you went from 1 mb of ram to 2 gigs of ram

 

[Joey Ravn]

2 nice Kingston 1GB 533MHz modules. Upgraded from 2 generic, 512KB 233MHz modules.



kelly is right

congratulations

you went from 1 mb of ram to 2 gigs of ram

Yup, but way faster

PS: Thanks, I'll set the amount to 3GB.

 

[ben_r_]

Well good for you! Def an improvement!

 

[arctic_flame]

2 nice Kingston 1GB 533MHz modules. Upgraded from 2 generic, 512KB 233MHz modules.



kelly is right

congratulations

you went from 1 mb of ram to 2 gigs of ram

Yup, but way faster

PS: Thanks, I'll set the amount to 3GB.

You've miseed the joke everyone's finding funny

 

[theman69]

How do u upgrade the pagefile?

 

[Joey Ravn]

2 nice Kingston 1GB 533MHz modules. Upgraded from 2 generic, 512KB 233MHz modules.



kelly is right

congratulations

you went from 1 mb of ram to 2 gigs of ram



Yup, but way faster

PS: Thanks, I'll set the amount to 3GB.

You've miseed the joke everyone's finding funny

Oh... that's it. Now I get it: K instead of M. Too much DS save files for me

PS: @theman69: Go to your Control Panel, System, Advanced Options, Performance -> Config -> Advanced again -> Change.

 

[FAST6191]

Personally I run a games, CAD and video encoding machine with 2 gigs of ram completely without a pagefile. Not had a problem yet (enjoying the extra space, extra speed that comes with fewer HDD spinups, reads/writes while doing something interesting and provided you are halfway sensible (i.e. no games plus 4 simultaneous heavily filtered X264 video encodes sort of thing) running out of ram is not a problem. Oh and several more gigs of space is always nice.
For the record 32bit XPSP2 stripped down via a harsh application of nLite and several tweaking tools is what I sport.

If you are on a space saving spree kill hibernation as well: for that much memory it usually sucks down a nice bit of space too and these days most things support saving your place OK.

 

[kellyan95]

Personally I run a games, CAD and video encoding machine with 2 gigs of ram completely without a pagefile. Not had a problem yet (enjoying the extra space, extra speed that comes with fewer HDD spinups, reads/writes while doing something interesting and provided you are halfway sensible (i.e. no games plus 4 simultaneous heavily filtered X264 video encodes sort of thing) running out of ram is not a problem. Oh and several more gigs of space is always nice.
For the record 32bit XPSP2 stripped down via a harsh application of nLite and several tweaking tools is what I sport.

If you are on a space saving spree kill hibernation as well: for that much memory it usually sucks down a nice bit of space too and these days most things support saving your place OK.

Your PC is still using a pagefile, it just isn't telling you

 

[arctic_flame]

I'm sure there's nothing stopping you turning the pagefile down to nothing.

 

[kellyan95]

Have this
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000422.html

 

[arctic_flame]

My point still stands. There's nothing stopping you from not using a pagefile.

And where in that article does it say windows uses a pagefile anyway, even if you tell it not to?

Also, an nLite'd XP can have as little as 11 Processes running on bootup.

 

[kellyan95]

nLite isn't as useful as you would think. The day will come when you need one of those processes and it will be hell for you. I know that Vista uses one when you tell it not to, pretty sure XP will unless you are really insistent.

 

[FAST6191]

The same can be said of any tool though, use it improperly and you will get messed up.

 

[arctic_flame]

Actually I use Linux and a Swap partition. Which is never needed, even if I insist on using the RAM hogging Firefox (I do) with it's choice extensions. (the process is using 99.7MiB of RAM ffs!)

Of course it depends on your setup whether you need pagefile or not, but if you're using a computer for Web browsing, downloading, media playing and coding (My laptop's functions) It never uses anywhere near 512MB of RAM.

Going back to that article, it's just general windows poor memory management + windows bloat that eats RAM - a setup like FAST6191's probably wouldn't need a pagefile. Also according to that article's comments, 2000&XP do let you run without a pagefile, however reluctantly.

Vista is a shambles for RAM management as far as I'm concerned and the fact that it does things without telling you is why people "downgrade" to XP

 

[GH0ST]

I agree ... Some apps are hungry ( compression, sound ... video edition , big files sort ).

You need a dedicate and separate disk for optimal performance also. it is counter-productive to simply move the paging file to another partition of the same hard disk.

There a lot of other tweaks to do ( drivers, registries ... ) it started with

Stop NTExecutive From Paging

In Windows NT, 2000 and XP, you can prevent pageable drivers and system code in the Windows NT Executive from being paged out to the paging file.

Normally, pageable drivers and system codes are paged out to the paging file to free up memory. Naturally, this reduces the performance of the operating system and affected drivers.

However, you can easily change that and force Windows to keep all drivers and system code in the system memory. But you will need to edit the registry.

Start up Registry Editor by running regedit.exe in the drive:\Windows\ folder or by going to Start Menu -> Run... -> regedit.exe.

Once you have opened up Registry Editor, go to the following subkey :-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

You will see the following screen :-

Look for the DisablePagingExecutive option. By default, it is set to 0.

Double-click on it and change its value to 1. Then close Registry Editor and reboot your computer.

When Windows boots up again, the pageable drivers and system code will no longer be paged out to the paging file. Instead, they will be retained in system memory for maximum performance.

This method works with Windows NT, 2000 and XP. It does not work with Windows 98 or Windows Me

( taken from http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=143 ... look at http://arstechnica.com/ for more ... even some old articles are hard to found... )

I tweak myself some "lite" W2K bi-PII with 512 Mo of Ram and SCSI drives running as fast as new babies with > 2 Go of Ram.

For XP check pages like http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html for a list of Services that you can disable on most systems and so on ... Always be carefull and try step by step or you will lose more time than expected...

 

[kellyan95]

And STALKER uses 2GB of ram and 2GB of pagefile, it is necessary. (with prefetch on)

There is a program called.......something about RAM....that can execute global memory compression and disable/enable executive paging easily

Ooh: FreeRAMXP Pro

 

[arctic_flame]

STALKER is apparently a game, so your point is moot.

Slight jab here, but I suspect that it would require less RAM on XP.

 

[kellyan95]

I'm on XP, and FAST said he games. More accuratly, it uses 1.73GB of RAM and 1.73GB of pagefile