No page file should be faster?

[steelbom]

hey, I've removed my paging file, just wondering if it should run faster or not?

I've set it to none, I have 18GB RAM so I don't think I need it for anything..

Should I keep it or not, I've not noticed anything much different.

Kind Regards

 

[Dark Nova Gamer]

With that much RAM disabling it should not really affect you, unless you use a lot of RAM Hungry programs.

 

[Captain Zero]

Disable it, entirely.

- No fragmentation
- No drive thrashing
- No pointless swapping

The pagefile is a throwback to the stoneage, it's not needed. I ran XP Pro with 2GB for almost 5 years without one and never had problems. With 7, I run x64 on 8GB and no pagefile. Zero problems and it's much faster.

 

[sup3rsprt]

I've set it to none,

I've not noticed anything much different.

and perhaps you never will. Personally, I keep a pagefile for compatibility reasons. It's on a RAID0 array and I never did notice any speed increase or lesser hard drive usage with it disabled. In fact, my hard drive activity in Windows XP is still dormant for the most part (but I cannot say the same about Vista or Windows 7...they both thrash the heck out my drives because of all this useless defragging and indexing...)

That said, disabling the pagefile probably won't hurt anything either...unless some programs decide to require it. It doesn't really make much difference either way.

 

[jw12345]

I don't think you will gain anything by disabling it. If you have enough memory then the page file is simply never used, so no performance hit. That is, unless you are incredibly cramped on disk space.

 

[sup3rsprt]

to disable "paging executive" would probably help more than disabling the pagefile.

disable both and you'll probably get the best performance. But like I said, it's pretty much unnoticeable.

 

[Victek]

hey, I've removed my paging file, just wondering if it should run faster or not?

I've set it to none, I have 18GB RAM so I don't think I need it for anything..

Should I keep it or not, I've not noticed anything much different.

Kind Regards

.
It would be interesting to see some careful tests done on systems with and without page files, varying amounts of ram and memory loads, etc. I think synthetic benchmarks are necessary to measure the differences. In theory I don't see why having a page file would slow the system as long as there is sufficient ram available. The OS only starts seriously leaning on the page file when the memory load is high. With 18 gb you probably never load the system enough for it to make a difference one way or the other.

 

[ciphernemo]

As others have mentioned, you'd want to keep it around for compatibility reasons. There are apps like some versions of Adobe's Photoshop that will complain if it's not around. Also, other applications of dubious quality will have serious issues without it.

I doubt there is much performance difference with the service and paging file disabled. If you're not using it, it's not being access, and the service is only taking up memory, not processing cycles.

 

[Scotteq]

If you have enough memory that you're not using the PageFile, then feel free to disable it. But it would be wise to not delude yourself into thinking that it makes a difference in performance. After all, you're disabling something your system wasn't using in the first place.

If that sounds confusing: All you're accomplishing is telling your computer to not write information to disc, which it was never writing to disk anyhow. Not writing before.. Not writing now... No Difference.


Personally, I don't disable mine. But instead specify a limit (512MB, in my case) on the chance that some program may want to use it. Makes feck~all difference in day to day performance. But it may save a little disc space. Keep in mind that many/most 32 bit programs can still only use 2GB of address/memory space at a time, may attempt to use the Page should that limit be approached, and may become unhappy if it can't do that.

 

[ciphernemo]

After all, you're disabling something your system wasn't using in the first place.

If that sounds confusing: All you're accomplishing is telling your computer to not write information to disc, which it was never writing to disk anyhow. Not writing before.. Not writing now... No Difference.

It's recommended to leave it enabled for certain applications. If you don't use applications that complain when it's disabled, no problem is disabling it.

So, if you have a lot of RAM, you don't need a pagefile, right? Not necessarily. When certain applications start, they allocate a huge amount of memory (hundreds of megabytes typically set aside in virtual memory) even though they might not use it. If no pagefile (i.e., virtual memory) is present, a memory-hogging application can quickly use a large chunk of RAM. Even worse, just a few such programs can bring a machine loaded with memory to a halt. Some applications (e.g., Adobe Photoshop) will display warnings on startup if no pagefile is present.

My advice, therefore, is not to disable the pagefile, because Windows will move pages from RAM to the pagefile only when necessary. Furthermore, you gain no performance improvement by turning off the pagefile.​

 

[Frostbite]

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

 

[MUff1N]

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! :shock:
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!

 

[Mongo]

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.

 

[steelbom]

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

Kind Regards

 

[ickymay]

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

 

[steelbom]

Yeah, but that would never happen to me

 

[Victek]

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

 

[Charles Kane]

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.

 

[Otase]

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.

 

[Layback Bear]

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.