Move Paging File?

[Omlet]

My new 80 GB HD just came i and I went ahead and installed Windows 7 x64 with no problems. I've also ordered 4 GB of ran to go along with my other 2 GB. I heard that I should move my paging file to another physical hard drive to increase performance. I have a 500 GB HD that could fit nicely into this. What should the size of the paging file be?

 

[richc46]

Welcome

Our members will help you with any decision that you make, but it is my feeling that moving the paging file will do little to help performance.

Should I change the size of my page file?

But, As in the link, set it to automatic that is the best bet.

Virtual Memory Paging File - Change - Vista Forums

 

[CommonTater]

My new 80 GB HD just came i and I went ahead and installed Windows 7 x64 with no problems. I've also ordered 4 GB of ran to go along with my other 2 GB. I heard that I should move my paging file to another physical hard drive to increase performance. I have a 500 GB HD that could fit nicely into this. What should the size of the paging file be?

Are you going to be running 6gb of ram?

Unless you're running a bunch of monster apps, with that much ram you might even be able to run without a page file. I'm on X86 with 2gb and it runs quite nicely without one...

Moving the pagefile to another physical drive might help performance a bit... but keep it as small as possible. The bigger it gets the more time windows spends maintaining it... start with min = 2048 and max = 2048 ... if the two sizes are the same size maintenance and fragmentation are cut to a minimum.

 

[Omlet]

Well I play alot of graphic intensive games. With the 2GB I have now, I doubt I can run smoothly with no page file.

 

[Omlet]

Welcome

Our members will help you with any decision that you make, but it is my feeling that moving the paging file will do little to help performance.

Should I change the size of my page file?

But, As in the link, set it to automatic that is the best bet.

Virtual Memory Paging File - Change - Vista Forums

I just read those articles and they did help alot! At the moment, I set my Drive C (Windows) pagefile to 200 MB both min and max for minidumps. Then, I created a pagefile on Drive G (Games) and set the pagefile to that at 2048 min and 2048 max. Is that good?

 

[richc46]

I think you will be happy with those settings. Glad that I was able to help a bit.

We have a great set of tutorials, full of information and advice.

 

[Lomai]

Hi omlet

Being a novice user myself, I have learnt to leave windows settings as is.
As an avid gamer, I have done most of what is included in the articles that Richard linked to. However, now I prefer to leave things as they are.
The best upgrades required to extract performance for gaming are primarily related to
1) RAM - which you have more than enough of
2)CPU - not familiar with AMD's however I think you are also good to go on this
3) Graphics card - that 9800GT should be able to hold its own

The only thing that I think is holding you back is your monitor. The limiting resolution could be whats making you think that you gaming graphics are not ideal i.e. slow performance.

What resolution are you running on?

Hope this helps in some way and regards

 

[Omlet]

My resolution is 1280 x 1024.

 

[Lomai]

Hi Omlet

Thanks and I think that it should be fine for games that you will be playing.
Just don't expect the games to run like they do on some rigs that you see on the web, you-tube etc.
It's the gaming that counts - nowadays, please talk a lot about graphics performance, which I think is more so for braggin rights

Take care and enjoy your games

 

[Tepid]

I will only say that.. you should always run with the recommended Page Files settings by MS.
ram x 1.5 = MIN
ram x 3 = MAX

Or if you have more than 4G of ram,, then both min and max should be 4092M.

It used to be true that moving the page file to a separate drive would increase performance dramatically, mostly due to the low end nature of PC's back in the day.

All modern PC's today are so fast that there will be no performance gain by either turning off the page file or moving it to another drive. However, this may change with SSD's only in the fact that, having the page file on a separate SSD drive will help if the SSD's are susceptible to Lifetime Write cycles. Meaning they will go bad quicker the more times they are written to. Then I could see moving it, maybe.

Many will argue my statement, but I stand by it after having tested these things for the last 12+ years.

 

[whs]

Once you installed your additional 4GBs of RAM, have a look into Resource Monitor > Memory tab. On the top it shows you the Hard Faults/sec. If that row is zero or mostly zero, any manipulation of the page file will buy you nothing (because it is not being used). And my guess would be that a 6GB system will not use it. My 3 and 4GB systems do not use it. So there is really no point jumping thru 9 hoops.

 

[tw33k]

I will only say that.. you should always run with the recommended Page Files settings by MS.
ram x 1.5 = MIN
ram x 3 = MAX

Or if you have more than 4G of ram,, then both min and max should be 4092M.

It used to be true that moving the page file to a separate drive would increase performance dramatically, mostly due to the low end nature of PC's back in the day.

All modern PC's today are so fast that there will be no performance gain by either turning off the page file or moving it to another drive. However, this may change with SSD's only in the fact that, having the page file on a separate SSD drive will help if the SSD's are susceptible to Lifetime Write cycles. Meaning they will go bad quicker the more times they are written to. Then I could see moving it, maybe.

Many will argue my statement, but I stand by it after having tested these things for the last 12+ years.

+1

 

[Omlet]

Ok so I'm getting mixed responses. Because I'm getting 6GB, should the paging file just be disabled? Also, Tepid, would MS settings be the same at 6GB? I'm just using this rig for gaming. So confusing!

 

[Brink]

Hello Omlet,

Since some programs may require the paging file to run properly and not get a "Out of memory" error, you should keep the paging file enabled and set to be managed by the system (Windows 7). I would recommend to leave the paging file to be on the same drive that Windows 7 is on (ex: C ) unless you have a second internal hard drive to put it on instead to help a bit with performance.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[CommonTater]

Ok so I'm getting mixed responses. Because I'm getting 6GB, should the paging file just be disabled? Also, Tepid, would MS settings be the same at 6GB? I'm just using this rig for gaming. So confusing!

Indeed this is getting confusing... But you know why?

There's no set rule for this. It's going to depend entirely upon your software, system config and the way you use the machine.

I get by on 2gb with no swap file because I seldom open more than 2 or 3 windows at a time, don't game and really don't much of an artistic talent... So I get away with it.

The next person might need 6 or 8gb ram and a 10gb swap file because they are computing "the answer to life, love and everything else"... and dearly hoping the answer is not "42".

There are some things that hold generally true...

First a system managed swap file that grows and shrinks with usage is very likely to become more and more fragmented over time... and, surprise, most defrag tools can't defragment it because it's locked by the system. This is where the suggestion for making min and max sizes the same comes from. That way the swap file occupies a fixed space on your disk, doesn't fragment and doesn't need much maintenance at all... Thus it ends up consuming less system resources.

The right size, is the smallest size that works for you. Bigger is not better... the bigger it is the more maintenance it needs and the longer that maintenance will take. I've seen windows hesitate for 30 and 40 seconds while thrashes hell out of a 30gb swap file... So start small and increase the size only as needed.


For the rest... well that depends whether you're sending email or solving lunar trajectories...