Long ago I turned off my Pagefile

[toolsong]

These blogs by Mark Russinovich are worth reading

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussino...1/3092070.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussino...7/3155406.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussino...6/3211216.aspx

[Singh400]

These blogs by Mark Russinovich are worth reading

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussino...1/3092070.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussino...7/3155406.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussino...6/3211216.aspx

Part of his "Pushing the Limits of Windows" series. He recently did another post, this one entitled Pushing the Limits of Windows: Processes and Threads. I'm no dev, but I still enjoy reading them. The guy is a genius.

[pipTheGeek]

What do you do? So lots of out of memory events are simply not handled well enough by the developers.

As you said, there isn't much you can do in the face of a genuine out of memory error. Hopefully you have used CER's where necessary and your process will be able to terminate without corrupting data, but one way or another, your process is probably gonna have to end.

However, what I was refering to was out of memory errors caused by an application requesting swap space specifically. Things like creating an area of shared memory is normally done as a type of memory mapped file and is backed by swap space, this would fail with an out of memory error code if there was no page file.

[badass]

Yes of course.....and no one would ever need more then 640k of memory either

What has that got to do with upgrading your RAM to twice as much as you currently have, or to put another way, more than your current RAM plus your swap file added together?

[badass]

The point that was lost on people in the previous thread is once again lost.
Switch on the pagefile and performance drops. I don't care why so I run with no page file. I also don't see how people think it is acceptable Windows cannot handle memory properly without one. There are so many ways that every problem mentioned by the developers on this thread can be resolved.
That is rubbish.

[shaithis]

What has that got to do with upgrading your RAM to twice as much as you currently have, or to put another way, more than your current RAM plus your swap file added together?

There are some tasks that push the swapfile way past the RAM size........doubling the RAM only delays the inevitable.

[blackbirds]

I personally hate people that set their swap relative to their RAM. (I have 12GB RAM so I MUST need 18GB Swap!) I normally set around 1GB fixed size and put it on a small FAT32 partition of its own.

I know what you mean. I think the problem is, fifteen years ago some writer published a tip in a magazine that the pagefile should be 1.5x the size of your memory, and it went viral from there by people who liked to make out that they knew what they were talking about, but only really knew enough to regurgitate what they'd read, and not apply any actual logic or understanding to it. I find it quite baffling that they'd think that even in today's world, someone that has 4GB of physical memory would need so much more virtual memory than someone who only has 1GB physical. I wonder what they think it all does.

People who obsessively defragment annoy me, too. Or people that insist on leaving 20% of a disk free because less than that makes the PC slow down. They're just relics from the past that people are too clueless to rationally think about and realise that they're totally obsolete, and in the case of the 20% thing, don't even make any sense.

I think there should be ammendments to the law that make it okay to shoot these people.

[kalniel]

People who obsessively defragment annoy me, too.

I think you're downplaying the theraputic effect of watching order form out of chaos

[Bugbait]

There are some tasks that push the swapfile way past the RAM size........doubling the RAM only delays the inevitable.

Such as? I'm sure there are many examples, but how many of them appear in "normal" operation for the majority of general users?

EDIT: In general office, browsing, and gaming (the majority of the use on my home desktop) I've run out of memory once (8Gig physical, no swap file) while using Vista Ultimate x64. This was due to a memory leak on a nearly installed application. Once it was removed the memory usage returned to normal.

Sure, you loose the logging and memory dump facilities when you switch the swap file off but I never look at them anyway. The only time my OS crashes is when a new driver is installed (thanks ATI) or during my overclocking testing.

For critical or server use the swap file should never be turned off. For general, non-critical use (arguably most home users) the swap file only serves to reduce performance if you have ample physical RAM.

[shaithis]

Well, it was a reply to the person telling me to upgrade my RAM so I can turn my pagefile off without even asking what I did with my PC....

Personally, I run a lot of VMs, so that immediatly requires my swapfile to be on and allowed to grow, else I run out of RAM VERY fast. The other task I perform that regularly takes we over my RAM limit is video editing....although I haven't actively monitored exactly how much RAM that is consuming, I know it peaks very high.

[pipTheGeek]

Although I can see that for certain applications disabling the swap file will improve performance, I can't see me ever being in a position to do so. I regularly run several virtual PC's, I also have SQL Server installed locally and I'm on a 32 bit OS at work and my XP install at home is also 32 bit.

I'm also put off slightly by a bad experiance with Win98. I used to disable my swap file (on a 64MB machine!) when I intended to run defrag. I tried to do the same on my dad's almost identical PC. Difference was I had a graphics card with its own RAM, he didn't. That 1MB made the difference between an OS that booted and one that didn't. Not that it's relevent, but Win98 is dog slow with only 64MB and no swap

[Zak33]

Or people that insist on leaving 20% of a disk free because less than that makes the PC slow down. They're just relics from the past that people are too clueless to rationally think about and realise that they're totally obsolete, and in the case of the 20% thing, don't even make any sense.

woah big boy...

outer edge of platter = faster than inner cylinders... and the more it happens and the more other stuff is installed, the slower it gets (SSD excepted)

install something on an 80%+ full HDD and see what happens...it runs slower. It'll boot slower, run slower and save data slower.

Especially games. Go get a 320 gig drive, fill it until it's only got 20gig left, then install ARMA2 or IL-2 or CoD5 on it...then play online, watch as you join onlinegames last, load textures and maps slower and can't move from area to area ingame without it jerking about. Try doing regualr Fast Game Save and Reload when you die.... it'll take and AGE.

AND... if you've not defragged that drive before installing a 6gig+ game install, it'll be dumped all over the place.

[this_is_gav]

install something on an 80%+ full HDD and see what happens...it runs slower. It'll boot slower, run slower and save data slower.

How will it boot slower?

Especially games. Go get a 320 gig drive, fill it until it's only got 20gig left, then install ARMA2 or IL-2 or CoD5 on it...then play online, watch as you join onlinegames last, load textures and maps slower and can't move from area to area ingame without it jerking about. Try doing regualr Fast Game Save and Reload when you die.... it'll take and AGE.

Yeah, it'll be slower, but not by that much. 95% of the time not even an amount slower that you'd notice without benchmarking.

I just don't see the point in turning it off. At no point on any system I use do I see a point where the page file would slow me down any more. Generally, Windows does know best. Unless there's a massive difference in performance that I've somehow missed all these years, I'll keep it that way.

[Zak33]

How will it boot slower?


Yeah, it'll be slower, but not by that much. 95% of the time not even an amount slower that you'd notice without benchmarking.

I just don't see the point in turning it off. At no point on any system I use do I see a point where the page file would slow me down any more. Generally, Windows does know best. Unless there's a massive difference in performance that I've somehow missed all these years, I'll keep it that way.

the game will boot slower..not the PC

and this aint about the page file now...it's about the drive being too full...which is what Blackbird is debating.

I know it takes longer.. I've had drives too full, the games load levels too slowly... when you die 50 or 60 times trying to complete a level, it's essential that it loads as fast as possible.

5 seconds vs 4 or even 3 seconds makes a difference.

[this_is_gav]

Why isn't it in the system RAM?

[Zak33]

It's a GAME SAVE.. or in ARMA2's case it's hundreds of square miles of russia or in Lineage2 case it's in hundreds of square miles of dungeon and dragons

But what I DO know is that games reload from hard drive in MANY cases every time.