2 gig's of ram, what should my page file be at ?

just wondering what you guys with 2 gig's have your page files set to for gaming. if i turn mine off some games dont like it, but if i dont turn it off BF2 still does alot of thrashing ?

I have only 1 gig and I leave mine off. Only adobe elements has ever even reccomended that I turn it back on.

Let windows manage it. This has been debated and no matter how much memory you have windows will still use some of the page file. Your games and other programs though should not touch it until you have filled up your ram. Windows auto will prob use up 1.5-2 gigs, but honestly that shouldn't be much for most people.

I would run a 256MB PF on a seperate drive from your main OS drive. Currently I have 1.5GB of RAM in my main rig. I run a total of 768MB of PF seperated on 3 hard drives. The only reason for the high PF is because I have a program that likes to use around 2.1GB total, so I make up for that extra little bit with PF.

Trombe said:

I have only 1 gig and I leave mine off. Only adobe elements has ever even reccomended that I turn it back on.

Click to expand...

hmm, i have it on system managed at the moment. i tried turning it off once with my machine that only has 1 gig and it was a disaster ! nothing ran right ...

like gab said. either leave it alone or set really high and static. spreading the PF out among multiple drives is a bad idea. i could explain it all or you could just do a search real quiick as this has been covered, in full, multiple times here on the forum.

Gabbiani said:

Let windows manage it. This has been debated and no matter how much memory you have windows will still use some of the page file. Your games and other programs though should not touch it until you have filled up your ram. Windows auto will prob use up 1.5-2 gigs, but honestly that shouldn't be much for most people.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

Windows seeks to free physical RAM whenever possible, and does this through paging out and paging in. Turning off the page file is not reccomended.

Advice: Leave it alone, make sure it stays contiguous, and don't play with System Properties > Advanced

YAY someone actually supported my view in a forum. Thanks guys. Things seem to run like poooppoooo for me when its turned off.

Gabbiani said:

YAY someone actually supported my view in a forum. Thanks guys. Things seem to run like poooppoooo for me when its turned off.

Click to expand...

Heh. Yep. Windows needs to have a place to page to.

ok, i'm leaving it on, it's currently set to "system managed size" thats right, correct ?

Sounds right to me.

I have mine set at 500MB static, and have never ever had a problem, right now it's static 450 and no problems, but only been about a month.

With 2GB of RAM I'd set up a 500meg RAMdrive and put it on that.

Are you guys saying that I should put my PF much higher?

I'm saying that Windows does a fairly decent job of managing it and unless you REALLY know what you're doing, you should not mess with it.

I have 2 harddrives, should I set it to windows managing it on my D drive ?

The_Jizzler said:

like gab said. either leave it alone or set really high and static. spreading the PF out among multiple drives is a bad idea. i could explain it all or you could just do a search real quiick as this has been covered, in full, multiple times here on the forum.

Click to expand...

Actually, I have read numerous times that spreading between multiple drives makes it act like a Raid Array. It is the equivalent of Raid0 by dividing between multiple drives. I know I read this somewhere, but I will have to dig to find it.

Splitting it up on multiple partitions is bad though. If you split it up, make sure they are physically seperate drives.

i'm finding this "whole" discussion very interesting ! "static" haven't seen that option. putting your page file on a seperate drive. hmmm ...

Turning it off is a bad idea. It's common sense too. Windows tries to use ram first, so it's not like having the page file on will atuomatically make windows write to your hdd all teh time.

And think of it this way. If you have enough ram that you NEVER need the paging file, then technically it is never used. And if it's never used, how does turning it off affect performance in any way shape or form? It doesn't. It's a tested and proven fact.

Also, having 1.5x or 2.5x your ram is a myth too. That was applicable back in the day when most people had very low ram amounts, but some programs could use plenty of memory(think the 128-256mb days). It's similar to the whole AGP aperature twice your vid card ram rule, which is outdated. If you got by with 1gig of ram and a 2 gig page file before, you sure as hell dont need a 4 gig file with 2gigs of ram.

All that being said, I've found that total virtual memory(physical + page file) should equal between 2-3 gigs. I used to have 1 gig of ram with a 1.5 gig paging file, which worked fine. There are times when you can break the 2gig virtual mem use barrier if you are doing something like playing BF2 while running azureus in the background(not recommended ). So it's best to have a little cushion room.

Another important note, is that if you don't have your page file equal at least your ram size, you can't get certain debug logs(like a complete memory dump log) if your system locks or crashes. Not a big deal for most, but it might be important for troubleshooters.

I currently have 2gigs of ram, and have my page file set at 2gigs(actually I have it set to dynamic from 2047-2048 for a special reason). This way I'm not eating away tons of drive space, but I also have it "in case I need it" which i probably never will .

btw, every system is different, so it's best to mess around and see what works best for you.

I have 2 gigs ram and my pagefile max 4096. BF2 uses alot when I had just 1.5 it pulled 650,000 and now with 2 its pulling 850,000.

ok, i have it set for system managed. it's using 2047 mb's. no minimun, no maximum. only 2047. should i set it manualy ? and what should i set the min/max at ? this is all very confusing.

windows knows what to do. People manually set it if they know exactly what they want/need. You probably don't know so leave it as it is. Really, windows sets it according to what it needs, so just leave it alone.