No page file should be faster?

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  1. Posts : 213
    Windows 7 x64
       #11

    In the words of Mark Russinovich, no real benefit from disabling it.

    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).
    Mark's Blog : Pushing the Limits of Windows: Virtual Memory
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 268
    Windows® 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
       #12

    Disabling pagefile created a HUGE drop in gaming perf.


    I tried disabling pagefile on my system a immediately saw a HUGE drop in systems & gaming performance!
    I did a number of tests to confirm this!
    This was using 7232 64bit with 4gigs of ram too.

    So for me & my system's setup I use 8gbs of page file on the front partition of my second drive away from the OS disk & get Great performance this way!
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails No page file should be faster?-disk-partition-layout.jpg  
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 51
    XPSP3, Se7en RTM
       #13

    This topic has been beaten to death time and time again in numerous forums over the years...

    Virtual memory will ALWAYS be a part of Windows no matter what. There's absolutely nothing to gain by disabling it. Many apps and games will insist on having a pagefile, let alone Windows. If you have lots of RAM, but are unwilling to sacrifice several gigs of disk space for the pagefile, allocate a minimum of 512mb and forget about it. The pagefile shouldn't be any larger than 4096mb. Anything over this amount is just a waste, IMO.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 50
    Snow Leopard (10.6.1)
    Thread Starter
       #14

    Well, Windows 7 allocated 36GB for my page file, so I think I'll set a max of 4GB lol

    Kind Regards
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 1,360
    win7 ultimate / virtual box
       #15

    you will need your "paging file" enabled if you need to debug any crashes such as computer stops unexpectedly because of a Stop error "blue screen," system crash, or bug check
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 50
    Snow Leopard (10.6.1)
    Thread Starter
       #16

    Yeah, but that would never happen to me
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 587
    Windows 7 x64
       #17

    steelbom said:
    Well, Windows 7 allocated 36GB for my page file, so I think I'll set a max of 4GB lol

    Kind Regards
    .
    That's remarkable. How did you determine that 36 gigs was allocated just to the page file? Did that happen using the "Automatically manage page file for all drives" setting? LOL is right
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 262
    Windows 7 Ultimate, Ubuntu
       #18

    I just want to bump Frostbite's post quoting Technet Guru, MS Engineer, and MS Front-end for the public face of their architecture - Mark Russinovich.
    The blog post is: Pushing the Limits of Windows: Virtual Memory and the Sub Heading is How Big Should I Make the Paging File?
    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).
    In the Comments one of the Engineers involved in setting pagefile size for Vista further explains:
    Configuring a system with lots of RAM to run without pagefile may have either negative or positive perf impact depending on what the system is doing. The general recommendation in this case is to create a reasonably sized pagefile (for example, 4 GB) and increase it if the Paging file\% Usage counter gets close to 100%.
    and
    By the way, there are actually 2 separate reasons why pagefiles are necessary.
    The first reason is to allow dirty pages that are never (or very rarely) referenced to be moved to disk, freeing up more RAM for other purposes.
    The other reason is to enable better use of *virtual* memory, given that physical memory is allocated on demand. Remember that when a process calls VirtualAlloc(MEM_COMMIT) there are no physical pages allocated at this time. Physical pages are only allocated when the app accesses virtual pages for the first time. This is good because it makes committing pages a relatively cheap operation, so apps can commit memory in bigger chunks, without having to worry about each page they may or may not use.
    Now, even though committing memory does not allocate physical pages, it still guarantees to the application that reading from/writing to the committed pages will never fail (or deadlock). It might be slow if other physical pages have to be moved to disk in order to make room, but it will eventually succeed.
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 50
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
       #19

    Thats a lie and you definitly need pagefile
    (prety much sure windows 7 was made to work with it),
    once tried set manualy 1gb min and max on pagefile for months just for test.
    (using 2nd HDD (D) OS HDD (C) i got 8gb ram)

    Then i did set managed by system (he sets max exactly the amount of ram i have 8gb)
    works far better that way and theres absolutly no fragments caused by pagefile eitheir...
    8gb on a 500gb hard drive is nothing for me.
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 25,847
    Windows 10 Pro. 64/ version 1709 Windows 7 Pro/64
       #20

    Good day Otase. You are posting on a very old thread.
    I do agree with you. One should use page filing. But that doesn't mean the people that disagree are telling a lie.
      My Computer


 
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