the best settings

I have an Inspiron 600m with 1GB of memory and would like to know is this the best setting for memory in Virtual Memory.

 

Your page file should be 1.5 times the size of your ram. For example, I have 2gb's so my size is 2875. I do recommend that you change your size to a fixed size. The reason is that as you use or don't use your pagefile it can become fragmented. The more that the system uses it, it will expand and contract dynamically. This causes some of the data to get fragmented during this process. If you set it to the recommended size, then no matter how much or how little its used the data doesn't get as fragmented because there is no change the file size. You would do this by changing to custom size and changing the Initial and Maximum size to the same figure.

 

I think setting page file 1.5 times the size of RAM is contrary to logic. The more RAM you have, the less likely your system will use the page file. Therefore, as RAM gets larger, the page file should be smaller.

Set it first to 1 GB and see if your system complains of running out of memory and has to use the page file. In most cases, 1 GB is enough for most people.

 

I disagree http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-6039379.html?tag=nl.e040

Virtual memory

Let's begin with a little refresher of virtual memory. To begin with, it's important to reiterate that Windows operating systems, Vista included, will always make use of virtual memory, even when the memory required by all running processes does not exceed the amount of RAM installed on the system. In fact, each and every process that's running on the system is automatically assigned a virtual memory address when it's loaded by the operating system.

When the memory in use by all the running processes exceeds the amount of RAM available, the operating system will begin moving pages of memory space in RAM out to virtual address spaces to the hard disk, thus freeing that RAM for other uses. These pages are then stored in a file called Pagefile.sys in the root of a partition.

When a running process that has been temporarily moved to virtual memory is needed, the operating system locates the virtual memory containing the process and returns it to RAM. As it does so, the operating system will have to move other pages of memory out of RAM to the page file in order to make room for the process that it just returned to RAM. This moving of memory pages is referred to as swapping and the paging file is often referred to as the swap file. This swapping requires a lot of overhead.

 

Just set it at 1024MB for both initial and max. More will work just as good, you'll just be wasting a few MB's of disk space.

 

Well, wingsbr, you're close - typically, 1.5-2x the size of your RAM is the way to go...to a point. but if you have 2GB of RAM, you can't possibly ever under any circumstances use more than 2GB of page file unless you have a 64-bit operating system - since 32-bit limits you to a total addressing space of 4GB. So in your case, for example, you're merely wasting some 800MB of HD space.

I typically just set mine to whatever brings my total amount of memory up to 4GB. That's fine for most purposes, although if you're stretched on HD space you can obviously set it lower. And at 2GB of RAM, you probably don't need much paging space anyways.