optimal page file size for 1GB RAM

ive heard lots of sifferent settings and im confused which one to use. If i have 1GB RAM is the pagefile even necessary? I dont think i use more than 700MB of memory in total, so i really dont need the extra virtual memory do i? Is it safe to disable it? I read that programs are faster that way because they are not stored on the HD, just in RAM.

Thanks.

 

The pagefile is necessary regardless of how much RAM you have and you should NOT disable it for any reason whatsoever.

Doing so will cause a memory-hogging application to use a large chunk of RAM and even freeze your system. For optimal performance, I recommend you set the initial & maximum sizes at 2.5 x system RAM.

 

Even if you have 1 or 2 GB of RAM, I would still advise against turning off the page file. You might be ok without a page file for a small number of applications with small memory usage, but this scheme doesn't scale well for a large number of applications with large memory usage.

With a page file, your system can support practically unlimited demand for memory. Without a page file, all you've got is what's physically available in the RAM chip; if a program needs to allocate 200MB and there's only 150MB of physical RAM available, then the request can't be fullfilled. I'm not sure what happens under that scenario, but it can't be good for the program or for system stability.

Also, while 1GB seems like alot of RAM, figure it like this. If you have ~30 applications running on your system, that works out like 34MB per application!

I would leave the page file enabled simply because it's safer, despite the relative slowness of disk access vs. RAM access.

 

Thanks for the replys guys i think ill leave it enabled then.

 

2.5 X your physical ram is a good guideline to follow.. if you're living in 1999 or using a computer with less than 256 Meg of memory.
Most experts (and Microsoft) have recommended 1.5 X for the quite some time.
If you have 1 G of RAM, there is no reason to have a pagefile that is 2.5 Gig (!) in size. If you have programs that need that much, you should be buying more RAM, not messing with the page file.
Right now it is probably set to dynamic by windows, which should be just fine. Windows will change the size of the pagefile based on your needs. If you want to get a little more advanced, you can manually limit the pagefile to a specific size or range. But you don't really gain anything in most cases, unless you are really low on hard drive space.
In any case, you don't want to turn it off completely.

 

I was once told that the fastest solution is to set the pagefile at a static size. Mine is 512 mb with 1Gb of ram. Atm. I haven't seen or experienced a program that would want more than that.

 

500 for min/max, on a drive that the os isn't on will give you the best performance. Good Luck.

 

That's a HUGE overkill.

 

On my system (256MB RAM), I'm using a ranged page file, initial size 2x physical RAM, maximum size 3x physical RAM. I don't recall where I read it, but I saw somewhere where they recommended this configuration. Letting Windows manage your page file is probably your best bet. Honestly, manually sizing your pagefile is not going to have any considerable impact on performance, unless you go nuts and size it verrry small or verrry large.

 

I heard that a dynamic page file slows down your computer when its size is adjusted so its better to have a static size. The 512MB page file w/ 1GB physical RAM sounds good to me, i know i wont use that much but ill keep it that way.

My last laptop had 256MB RAM and i had the pagefile set to 1.5xRAM for min/max and it worked fine. I think i only had one error in the two years i used it when it ran out of memory.

If i want a specific application to run in RAM only and not use the pagefile, is there any way of doing this? I know RAM and virtual memory and highly linked, but this would result in a faster application right?

 

Well you can't really control it. If the application allows you to run it in Virtual Memory , then you choose it [Such as VMWARE]. Most of the time it would be set to automatic. Windows would use Pagefile whenever it needs it !

 

I'm sure there's some overhead associated with growing or shrinking a page file, but if you size it statically, then there won't be any way to obtain more page space on disk in the event it's needed. It gets back to the whole speed vs. stability thing.

Paging is an important aspect of the Windows virtual memory scheme. It allows many applications to have the illusion of a full 2GB address space, when in reality, granting that kind of physical memory to every process would require an insanely large amount of RAM. Yes, a process would execute faster if all pages are in physcial RAM, but there's really no way to guarantee that under Windows. Windows is more concerned with balancing a dynamic set of running applications than optimizing performance for a single application.

 

The only reason to set a low pagefile size is to save HD space.
It doesn't provide any performance advantages.
The pagefile is used to swap data out of ram when other data is required. The data you're currently using will *always* be in ram. If something you need is located on the pagefile, Windows will automatically swap something else out, and read the required data into ram, because programs are unable to directly access the pagefile.
No matter how big your pagefile is, it's *only* ever used when data needs to be pushed out of ram. If that's not neccesary, the pagefil simply won't be used, no matter how big it is.

Since a 32-bit OS such as Windows can address 4GB of memory, that's a good upper bound on the pagefile size. Going above that just doesn't make sense.
And if you have 1GB ram, you could even argue that there's no reason for the pagefile to be over 3GB since that gives you a 4GB address space combined, although I'm not sure if Windows agrees with that logic.

 

So For 2 gigs of ram try around what PF?

What about for 1 gig of ram what PF?

Thanks

 

You should read the rest of my post... that sentence is immediately followed by;

 

It's really simple! The formula has always been 1 or 1.5X physical RAM. If you allow system managed RAM switching, then all will work fine, but there may be a tiny performance hit. So for 1GB RAM set at 1.5GB, or as I do 1024MB, and I never have a crash due to memory and my machine runs beautifully.
So no problemo!!!

 

My is set like this:

Minimum: 1024
Maximum: 2048