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#1
XP Mode VM Memory Allocation recommendation?
I'm using Win7 Pro x64 running on an i7-2600K @ 3.5GHz with 16GB @ 1600MHz with an Intel X25-M 160GB SSD (or in other words a fast machine with a fast hard drive with heaps 'o memory. Having so much main memory (which is cheap these days so why not) I've got no paging file at all, which I personally think is a good idea (please tell me I'm wrong if I am).
My question is about how much memory I should allocate to my "XP Mode" virtual machine, and whether I should use a paging file inside that VM. My own personal logic is to assign it 3GB (the max XP-32 can deal with) and as I've given it that much, I can disable it's page file too. That seems to me to be the ideal configuration. I'm hearing from others though that the load on the host OS by having to handle that much memory for one of it's VMs is more than the benefit gained by the VM not having to have a paging file. I'm being told I should allocate somewhere between 512MB an 1GB to the VM and let it use a paging file when it needs to. That seems counter-intuitive to me.
My host OS/Processor is way under-utilized most of the time and can easily handle any extra hard work it needs to in order to provide the VM that much memory. Plus not having to write to a virtual paging file which in turn would be written to a real VHD on a real drive can't be better than using memory. Can it?