Solved SSD Free Space & Performance.

[gary palmer]

I have an Intel SSD for OS. Whether free space is at 20% or at 5% they does not appear to be any difference in performance that I can discern. By performance I mean running a vast 50GB game such as DCS World flight sim at close to max settings.

My specs are:
Computer type PC/Desktop
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit 7601 Multiprocessor Free Service Pack 1
CPU Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Motherboard ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z87-C
Memory 16.00 GB
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770
Hard Drives (1) INTEL SSDSC2CW120A3 ATA Device (2) WDC WD1001FALS-00J7B0 ATA Device (3) WDC WD10EARS-00MVWB0 ATA Device.

Am a bit confused with this as I keep reading at various forums that you should have from 15%>25% free space. Is this a case that my PC setup has enough power that having free space of 5.59GB which is 5% of total size of 111.8GB does not effect performance? Should mention I have got rid of the hidden hibernation file on C drive but am wondering is it worth it for me to reduce the size of the page file from Windows allocation of 16GB down to a lower value like say 12GB or 8GB? This would give me more space to install another program but would it result in a discernible performance decrease?

Thx...GaRy

 

[LMiller7]

There is nothing special about the default pagefile size allocated by Windows. As long as the commit charge is well below the commit limit you can use a smaller pagefile with no performance degradation. An 8 GB or even 4 GB pagefile should be quite adequate.

 

[AddRAM]

You have 16 GB of memory, you don`t even need a page file, I haven`t used a page file in over 3 years.

Maybe you should look over your drive closely and see what you can get rid of.

I install all my games on another drive.

 

[gary palmer]

SSD Free Space & Performance

Thanks for reply posts. I have reduced page file from system set 16GB down to 8GB and everything runs fine with games I play. This has given me more space to install Ableton recording software on PC and still have
about 15GB free space of 112GB total.
As info I would not suggest to simply turn off the page file so it does not exist. With the research I did this day it should be mentioned they are programs around that will not run without an existing page file. Adobe Photoshop is one. It is not about performance demands made by such programs but rather that their design assumes a page file is in existence and just there so to speak. These programs do not know how to run without it being available.

GAry

 

[LMiller7]

Applications do not and cannot use the pagefile themselves and this is strictly enforced by the system so the requirement that a pagefile exists is hard to understand. But applications like Photoshop require a large commit limit which is defined as RAM size minus a small overhead plus pagefile size. With default configuration the pagefile can grow if necessary. (This does not occur under normal circumstances). With no pagefile the commit limit is somewhat less than RAM size and this is a hard limit. Maybe that is the reasoning. But a 16 GB commit limit is very large by normal standards and should be more than enough.

 

[gary palmer]

Thanks LMiller7...I have adjusted down the page file from Windows setting of 16GB down to 8GB and games run without a problem. I have gained space I wanted on C drive and page file is still generous according to others that know about this stuff than I do. Cheers...Gary