windows paging file

[dbee]

Just did a bit of reading on windows paging file. I disabled it and noticed one of the consequences of doing so, no memory dump files so i cant see what error occured on BSOD while overclocking.

From what i understand, the paging file is only used when physical memory usage is maxing out.

Does disabling it or reducing the file size offer any performance increase at all?

[genec57]

Re: windows paging file

The only way you take a performance hit is when Windows needs the paging file resulting in disk activity. You don't say how much ram you have but if you have over 4gb to take advantage of your 64 bit OS then you would not see any performance hit at all.

It is usually not a good idea to do away with the paging file altogether as you have seen re dump files. Also, the are some apps that need a paging file. Beat to just leave it at system manage.

[dbee]

Re: windows paging file

Yea i set it to match my RAM at 6gb. Sucks not knowing what your BSOD codes are.

Thanks Genec.

[Psycho101]

Re: windows paging file

Getting rid of the page file can hurt performance regardless of how much RAM you have. Performance isn't decreased by a huge amount, and likely only detectable via benchmarks, however it does prove that having no swap file isn't the fastest option.

PC Format Magazine published a 5 page article in the September issue (issue 230) detailing different methods of organising the swap file. The following is an exert from the summary (Copyright Future Publishing, and all that legal blah, blah):

"Having no page file, while it might sound clever on the face of it could actually slow things down ever so slightly and if you do hit a low memory situation it's going to cause problems. We can see that anyone with a SSD will be fine with either a fixed or system managed page file. For the rest of us the best solution is to opt for a user fixed size page file and as most users now have a second hard drive in their machine, choose to store two seperate fixed page files, one on each drive. When swapping does occur, this will keep times down to a minimum."

From the many graphs they published (which I obviously can't post) the difference between a single fixed swap file and two, on seperate drives is not drastic, but two seperate files does win. This is an advantage in two ways. Firstly because crash dumps require a page file on the OS partition and secondly because there are two different sets of read/write heads working on transmiting page file data. there seems to be some kind of of primative RAID0 style spreading of info over the two files, meaning transfer times in that config improve.

[Ickk]

Re: windows paging file

Mark Russinovich explains a bit why a pagefile is usefull in one of his blogs here *note the pagefile part is at the end * https://blogs.technet.com/markrussin...7/3155406.aspx

Quote
"Some feel having no paging file results in better performance, but in general, having a paging file means Windows can write pages on the modified list (which represent pages that aren’t being accessed actively but have not been saved to disk) out to the paging file, thus making that memory available for more useful purposes (processes or file cache). So while there may be some workloads that perform better with no paging file, in general having one will mean more usable memory being available to the system (never mind that Windows won’t be able to write kernel crash dumps without a paging file sized large enough to hold them)."

[KayossZero]

Re: windows paging file

I've also noticed that an application I use "Ultimate Defrag" needs a pagefile for its boot time module to work (which took me a long time to figure out why it wasn't working ) and that the game "Warhammer: Dawn of War II" requires one as well to even start so yeah for some things a pagefile is unavoidable.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: windows paging file

Perfect Disk also needs a page file for boot time defragging.

I always use, suggest, and set for those who are not looking a user defined amount. I make that amount at least 1-1.5 x the ram installed, and set the min and max values to matching amounts, that way less fragmentation occurs.