3GB Ram do I still need a page file?
Community Forums/General Help/3GB Ram do I still need a page file?
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| I have upgraded Vista 32bit to 4GB (though I know it will only use about 3.5GB), will I get better performance disabling the pagefile? |
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| You can't disable it. The page file is essential. I tried disabling it (8GB RAM should be enough) and soon enough I had BSODs. However, you can use a minimal pagefile (I use 512MB). Apparently it's enough to keep Windows from crashing, and it's small enough to not bother me. However, I would still recommend having something like 1GB pagefile with 3GB of RAM. You MAY run out of RAM when having lots of tabs open in your browser, an IDE in the background, music player running, etc. I am more of a "forget to close applications" kind of user, but I did manage to often go above 4GB and that's why I upgraded. |
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| There'll always be that one stupid application that'll crash without the pagefile, so just keep it on for the sake of less headaches. |
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| You get the best performance when you look what it says in "Recommended Size", and then put both minimum and maximum size to that size. Then the page file cannot be resized on the fly (which causes a huge performance hit), and it's not too big or too small. It's good to defrag also before creating the fixed size pagefile, so that the pagefile is in a continuous area. |
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| I have upgraded Vista 32bit to 4GB (though I know it will only use about 3.5GB), will I get better performance disabling the pagefile? No, you won't, but what you really want now is to upgrade to 64-Bit Vista. Your license covers it, just get the installation medium (you can order it directly from Microsoft for a small handling fee). |
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| Yeah, I disabled it with 8GB as well, and you always get something that crashes or complains. Dawn of War 2 for example: "You need 1GB of virtual memory to run." Dang. So I re-enabled it ;P |
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| You can disable it -- I did it with only 2 GB (in XP) and things really do run much better, such as the start menu, etc, opening up and loading in shortcuts instantly (it's forced to keep them in real memory), but I seem to recall there was something that caused a problem or annoyance, though I can't remember quite what! You won't cause any irreparable harm by trying it, as long as you test it without any hugely important data. You can always boot up and re-enable it (worst case scenario, in Safe Mode). |
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| @Lumooja That recommended size is bollocks. It's usually 1.5 your physical RAM. For me, windows recommends around 12GB. Think about this: 12GB Pagefile + 8GB hyberfil.sys (hybernation) = wasted, immovable space on my hdd. I could, instead, have a ton of applications there, defragged to the edge of the HDD for faster acces. Usually you should aim for a 4GB total and 512MB min pagefile. My personal recommendation: RAM - PF 512MB - 512MB (you should really buy some RAM at this point) 1GB - 1.5GB 2GB - 2GB 3GB - 1GB 4+GB - 512MB The thing is that not only software that needs paging file crash the OS, but windows itself needs a little bit. When you set the paging file, windows says: "Minimum allowed: X". On my work PC (2GB RAM) it says 16MB minimum. If you don't have a paging file and windows requests one byte of those 16MB... *drums*... BSOD!!! |
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| I have XP 32bit, 4GB and have run with pagefile disabled for a year. No issues with BSOD or other problems. |
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| @_JIM: Yes, at more than 4GB RAM the 1.5 factor doesn't make any sense. It seems 4GB pagefile is maximum needed when you have more than 4GB RAM. |
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| I think you always need it if your using vista it trys to fill your ram on purpose, with all your most commonly run apps so that windows is more responsive and flushes ram as it requires it. |
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| It might work with XP, but not with Vista and Win7. What MS should do it allow you to configure a portion of the RAM as the pagefile. Kind of like an Amiga Ram disk. Maybe Windows 10 will have it. Jason |
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| @Jason W. Well, you can cheat. Make a ramdisk and put the pagefile there. I think I'll try that... |
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| Can you even do that? Normally any changes to the pagefile will take a reboot to take effect, and a RAM drive likely wouldn't be initialized yet before windows wants to access/validate the pagefile. The Amiga ramdisk was a very nice concept, though. Great for temp files, too. |
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| I don't think you need to reboot if there was no pagefile prior to creating one. But there might be an issue if you boot up the next time. The only way to find out if it works is to see if the ram disk is created prior to the OS pagefile settings being applied during a boot sequence. Jason |
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| Thanks all, and thanks Winni...I will look into that because I was thinking or running SONAR on 64bit. [edit] Just had a look and hang on a minute, I have Vista ultimate so apparently I should already have the 64 bit media...I'll have a look when I get home. ;) If I can get that installed I will put my other ram in and go up to 6GB. |
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| Checked my disc and it only has the 32 bit version even though it is vista ultimate. It says it includes windows anytime upgrade but it looks like 'anytime' just ran out...should I try to sue microsoft? lol http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-vista/products/anytime-upgrade doh! |
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| Checked my disc and it only has the 32 bit version even though it is vista ultimate. If it's the OEM version, then you only get one format. If it's retail, it should come with both. The license key should still work with both though, so if you can borrow an x64 disc from a friend you can still install it with your own license key on your own computer. do note that you can't upgrade from the 32-bit version to the 64-bit version, you have to do a fresh install. It says it includes windows anytime upgrade but it looks like 'anytime' just ran out.. IIRC the anytime upgrade was intended for switching between releases, e.g. allow you to upgrade from "Home Premium" to "Ultimate" for an additional fee. |
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| Thanks for the information everyone. |
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