Cleaning up clutter from memory

[Anusha]

I bought an SSD and one of the tweaks is to disable pagefile. I anyways had pagefile disabled, but waited for the right time to ask about before getting dissed for not using a pagefile when I should.

So the thing is, what the Task Manager shows as Memory (Private Working Set) has no real meaning without a pagefile. What is actually used it much more, in fact I think it is the Peak Working Set. Without a pagefile, there is no way to clean up the allocated RAM spaces within each process' allocations. Paging in and out cleans up the clutter, hence usually gives much better RAM usage results.

With few programs open, if I try to launch COD4, it would eventually say I have run out of RAM because the RAM usage rockets passed 80% which is when the warning appears. But I am yet to crash the system without a pagefile...at least on Windows 7. I crashed Windows Vista twice like that, but 2 crashes in 3 years is something I can live with

But it would be better to do something about the RAM usage. Apparently, closing the apps and reopening helps. But it is a pain for apps such as MSE and services and DWM etc.

My question is, is there anything I can do? Will RAM defraggers or whatever help in this situation? What I think is, they also use the pagefile to clean up the RAM. That's why after running such a tool, the system is very slow because of the stuff is in the pagefile and aren't moved back to RAM.

Any thoughts on this?

P.S.
I would upgrade to 8GB RAM, but my mobo has trouble with 8GB especially when OCed.

 

[Anusha]

*Bump*

 

[logicearth]

Close down applications....without a pagefile there is no place to put excess memory so "cleaning" is not possible without closing down applications.

 

[whs]

I kept my pagefile on the SSD - especially with Win7 and Trim I see no harm.

 

[Anusha]

Close down applications....without a pagefile there is no place to put excess memory so "cleaning" is not possible without closing down applications.

Apps, OK. What can I do about the services? Guess I will have ti tweak some of them then.

I kept my pagefile on the SSD - especially with Win7 and Trim I see no harm.

No trim support for this Kingston drive yet. Besides, there is no need for trim in this case. The reason for disabling the pagefile is to prolong the "life" of flash cells. Trim only prolongs the write "performance" of the empty space.

 

[logicearth]

I would just add a mechanical HDD to the system and put the pagefile there.

 

[Anusha]

I would just add a mechanical HDD to the system and put the pagefile there.

I would not use a pagefile unless I'm specifically asked to do that. I want the responsiveness of the system. I've only had the system crash twice due to lack of RAM in the last 3 years (that was with Vista too), I don't think I should worry much about not having a pagefile.

Guess I don't have a solution to this other than rebooting the PC often.

 

[stormy13]

How about this, create a small 1 GB pagefile, bet the memory error with COD4 will go away.

 

[Anusha]

Memory error, or rather the notification will go away the second I enable the pagefile. But still it would be often slowing down the system.

 

[stormy13]

You have two choices,

1. Run with no pagefile and put up with the errors, and hope you aren't running something like Photoshop if it happens and crashes the system, and you end up losing everything you were working on.

2. Run with a pagefile, and suffer with what is probably next to nothing as far as a performance hit goes.

 

[logicearth]

But still it would be often slowing down the system.

How would it be slowing down the system?
Sounds like a preconception myth to me.

 

[whs]

But still it would be often slowing down the system.

How would it be slowing down the system?
Sounds like a preconception myth to me.

I can only agree. If it is not used, it will do nothing. And if it really needs to be used, that's better than a BSOD which really slows you down. I think there is a confusion with superfetch.

 

[Anusha]

But still it would be often slowing down the system.

How would it be slowing down the system?
Sounds like a preconception myth to me.

I can only agree. If it is not used, it will do nothing. And if it really needs to be used, that's better than a BSOD which really slows you down. I think there is a confusion with superfetch.

It slows down the system because Windows unnecessarily pages stuff that are not used in a while, regardless of whether you have a lot of free RAM available or not. For example, you play a game for a while and want to quickly come to the desktop, you can't do that as fast as where there wasn't a pagefile. It may or may not be noticeable to you, or even the slowdowns are acceptable to you. Maybe it doesn't slow down for the things that you do. There are certain things that can give bad results with a pagefile such as audio composition. Again, everything is subjective.

But..enabling the pagefile is NOT the solution I'm hoping for. Probably there is no solution for my problem, because everything has its good and bad sides.