Ok so I know page file has been beaten to a pulp on the internet. Some people claim turning it off makes better performance and others say this causes crashing.

For turning off PF: http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/14063-no-page-file-should-faster.html

For Leaving it Stock, but maybe lowering it: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/240183-44-optimizing-swap-page-file-vista

Haha, Forum vs Forum reference.

But really, I have 8 Gb of RAM in W7 x64 Pro and I'm wondering if dropping the pagefile down to say 512mb instead of 8Gb (stock pf)

My system specs:

CPU: Intel C2D (EO) E8500@4.2ghz 1.3V (8.5x495mhz)
GPU: eVGA NVIDIA GTX 295 (Dual PCB) @702/1512/2420
LCD: BenQ FP241W 24" P-MVA LCD (1920x1200)
Mobo: BioStar T-Power i45 AA512
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi Prelude
RAM: OCZ Reaper 4x2Gb DDR2@988mhz 5-5-5-15
PSU: Seasonic M12 700W 80+ 56A
Drive: LG Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Drive GGC-H20L
UPS: Cyberpower CP1200AVR (720W)
OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Pro x64
Cooling: Antec 900 + Tuniq Tower 120 + 4x Silverstone FM121 (110CFM)

1/17/2010 3:35:48 AM

1. Nice job fucking up the thread title.


2. Depends on what you do. I just turn it off unless I know I'm going to push the limits of my memory. I have never had a crash because I didn't have a page file. However, the only benefit that comes from turning off the page file is applications that have been inactive for a while "wake up" faster when you switch back to them. With 8GB of ram, it's unlikely that anything you do will exceed your physical memory. If it does, either your computer come grinding to a near halt (page file enabled) or the application gets a memory error and probably fails ungracefully (no page file).

If you want to be able to hibernate, then the page file must be at least the size of your physical memory (and I think it has to reside on your system disk too).

Also, no crash dumps without a page file either (but everyone uses those all the time, right?)

1/17/2010 8:17:21 AM

8084 is BACK

1/17/2010 10:22:24 AM

obvious answer:

try it. it isn't going to destroy anything.. and i expect it will work as good or better with that much ram.

1/17/2010 10:35:08 AM

lol, a bit unrelated, but... we got a system in with 128gb of ram and it only had a 149gb raid1 mirror... server 2008 r2 decided to create a 128gb page file i was wondering why i was already almost out of space

Quote :

"Also, no crash dumps without a page file either (but everyone uses those all the time, right?)"

this is why i always keep a small page file... you never need dumps until you REALLY need them, heh.

1/17/2010 1:35:07 PM

it's proven (except for a small niche of gamers) that enabling the page file HELPS.

keep it enabled, set it at minimum to the same amount as your ram (8gb) or more. and set it to custom and set your min & max to the same amount (thus windows won't resize the page file causing slow-down & fragmentation) and put it on it's own partition or hard drive.

do all of this and you'll see prolonged performance gains.

i think LimpyNuts & evan covered the other things.

[Edited on January 17, 2010 at 2:17 PM. Reason : ,]

1/17/2010 2:15:30 PM

thanks for the opinions guys, I'll keep a small PF.

1/17/2010 4:02:57 PM

Quote :

"set it to custom and set your min & max to the same amount (thus windows won't resize the page file causing slow-down & fragmentation) and put it on it's own partition or hard drive"

better yet, create a 2gb partition on your OS hard drive, remove the page file on the OS partition and set the page file to occupy the entirety (minus 5mb, of course) of page partition (set max and min the same so it doesn't change file size)

i keep 2gb for shits and giggles (mostly goes back to the day where they recommended 1.5-2x your RAM size)...you could probably go less, but i'd not recommend any less than 1gb (not sure why...just feels...wrong)

[Edited on January 17, 2010 at 4:20 PM. Reason : reading comprehension FTW]

1/17/2010 4:20:12 PM

Do some reading on Windows prefetching / cached memory. You have 8GB of RAM, so likely this is helping you out in a huge way. Tuning this will make a bigger difference than your swap file.
Keep in mind, your system WILL want to swap that prefetch space somewhere (say a swap file) if you load up a memory intensive application (game) which happens to suck your memory dry. Without a swap file, it needs to reload all of the crap again when you quit the game.

1/17/2010 6:48:14 PM

I'm using two SSDs in raid 0, 8 GB of ram, win7x64, and disabled my pagefile.

No problems here.

1/18/2010 10:44:05 AM

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

Basically peak commit - total physical memory +/- wiggle room/crashdump space.

1/18/2010 12:17:29 PM

and referenced here:
http://lifehacker.com/5426041/understanding-the-windows-pagefile-and-why-you-shouldnt-disable-it

1/18/2010 12:29:58 PM