page file help!

[rocco]

Is page file size important? if yes what should i set mine!
Thx

[Enablingwolf]

To get to the point before I answer your question.


If your unsure of what is going on, leave it be. Windows has already configured the PF for you during install.

Now to answer your questions.

Is page file size important. YES, very much so. It is part of how Windows operates. To little and you can get errors. To much and it will slow you down.

The general rule is one and a half times what you have installed.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654/en-us

Now some disable the page file. Though Windows will still create a page file. There is no real way a user can really disable it. Though setting it to a super low is about the same effect as not having it.

Some apps depend on it, some don't/ I know Photoshop will give an error on startup if it is disabled.

If you have loads of RAM it should not use it much. Hence why some just disable it. I feel it does nothing bad and only offers benifit. So I just set it at 1.5 times my installed amount and leave it. I do however have it on another hard drive using another channel.

[rocco]

i have 2gig ram so i should set it 5 gig?

[russ_da_bus]

Man you're bad at maths :), 1.5 x Physical RAM would be 3GB.

[tacochransr]

http://www.theeldergeek.com/paging_file.htm
link to a lot of good page file info, 2 include a win xp
min. of 2mb and performance by re locating to dedicated drive

[rocco]

i meant 3, no im not bad at math lolol just it was 3am and i almost fell asleep by my computer!

[amazon10x]

The general rule of 1.5 * Physical_RAM makes no logical sense. The paging file exists for when the RAM fills up and something else needs to go in it. When this happens, Windows will take something that is in RAM but not being used and copy it to the paging file, therefore making room for whatever new program needed to be loaded into RAM.

Clearly, when one has more RAM there is less of a need for a paging file. Imagine if you had 16 GB of RAM in a computer. Obviously this computer (if used for something ordinary) would not need a paging file. But, if you follow the general rule, you would set a paging file of 24 GB.

The only way to determine a good paging file is to calculate the most RAM you would use at any point in time. This will be different for different people. Between F@H, QEMU, Apache, MySQL, MSVC, and several other things I use at once, I'll sometimes use up to 1 GB of memory. Since I have 512 MB of RAM, I set my page file to 768 MB to be safe.

With my mother's computer I would set it to something completely different because her computer is different than mine, and what he does with her computer is astronomically different than mine.

If you don't feel like messing with all this, then just let Windows manage it. It will do fine with it and you will probably not notice a difference between Windows managing it and you managing it. I've heard Windows XP's memory management is better than Windows 2000's.

[Enablingwolf]

The link I provided. Though not for XP is the best way. Beyond simple the fomula of just setting it to 1.5 and forgetting it.

The setting like I mentioned best for 90% out there is to just let it be set during the install. This is where most get the idea of 1.5, since that is about what the Windows install gives for the max.