2 GB RAM - Pagefile Size ???

phpdog

Senior member
Jun 26, 2003
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Hi ,

I have 2 GB's of RAM installed on my Mothers PC .

2 x 1024 GeIL PC3200 DDR400 - 7-3-3-2.5 @ 2.7V

I know usually the rule is 1½ which would be a 3 GB or 3000 MB Pagefile / Virtual Memory .

Is this ok , of would i get better system performance for gaming with a Lower or Higher Pagefile / Virtual Memory size ?

Im running Windows XP Home Edition .

Any advice extremely appreciated :confused: .

Thank You
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Just off the top of my head, the operating system would probably automatically select 3GB.

[I hope you haven't powered on your Striker board with 184-pin DDR500's socketed. I hope you haven't put them in the sockets. PLease . . . . tell my you just made some sort of typo here. . . ]

I think the pagefile size would be proportional to the amount of memory in the system; more memory in the system would improve gaming performance; gaming performance would decline only insofar as there was a need to use the pagefile more frequently. Usage is one thing; size is another.

Here's an example from my own recent troubles. I had 2x1GB + 2x512MB = 3GB socketed. The pagefile size is in excess of 4GB. Running stress-test software, there is only intermittent paging that occurs because the memory is ample. I then remove the 2x512 kit, the pagefile size will be adjusted downward by the OS. But suddenly, the stress-test software is starved for memory and constantly using the pagefile.

Does that help?
 

JustaGeek

Platinum Member
Jan 27, 2007
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It's his mother's PC, Bonzai...

I would recommend to "Let the Windows decide".

It will choose (most likely) 3GB, and there is no actual advantage in selecting it manually.

The manual selection was advisable in the past, when Hard Drive space was at a premium.

Today, 3GB is like a drop in a bucket...
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
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Originally posted by: JustaGeek
The manual selection was advisable in the past, when Hard Drive space was at a premium.
Less that than it was that fragmentation used to be a really big deal. While super-fragmented files are bad, the page file won't act like most files anyway, is random enough without fragmentation of the file in the picture, AND fairly modern drives suffer far less of a performance hit from fragmentation than drives of old.

I defrag regularly because my inbox gets pretty slow to load (~2GB and rising) after a couple months...nothing else is really a problem, even though I can get reports showing many commonly used files having dozens to hundreds of fragments.
 

jonmcc33

Banned
Feb 24, 2002
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Originally posted by: JustaGeek
It's his mother's PC, Bonzai...

I would recommend to "Let the Windows decide".

It will choose (most likely) 3GB, and there is no actual advantage in selecting it manually.

The manual selection was advisable in the past, when Hard Drive space was at a premium.

Today, 3GB is like a drop in a bucket...

The problem is that it doesn't set it to one size. The paging file can vary so you'll get a fragmented paging file if you ever peak past your physical memory.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Yes, the framentation becomes a slight problem, and defragmentatiion maintenance won't resolve it. This has always been part of the tradeoff regarding virtual memory: the interface between RAM and an electro-mechanical device. And of course, even RAM becomes "fragmented." But opening up the bottleneck at the "high-storage-capacity, lower-speed" part of the pyramid -- through RAID or just faster hard-disks would mitigate that problem.

Anyway, if the game program has enough memory in RAM, paging operatiions will be at a minimum.

Here's another thought. VISTA has a feature that can use a USB flash drive with sufficient capacity for paging. There's a little project in "Maximum PC" Magazine for building the flash-drive into the system -- so that it plugs right in to a motherboard USB plug.

Since you can distribute page-files across mutliple hard disks in your system, I'm wondering if this can't be made to work in XP.

Why wouldn't it? 8 GB flash drives can be had for between $30 and $60, depending on the bargain opportunity.
 

Hurricane Andrew

Golden Member
Nov 28, 2004
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Honestly, 2GB or more in a system and I simply set it at a min of 2048 and max of 3072. I've yet to see the pagefile grow a single byte over the initial setting, regardless if it's one of my XP or Vista boxes. Andy they all Fold 24/7 on top of that.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Hey!! That's nice!! It works in Win 2000 also. I've got this old Pentium4 I use as a file server, and this will be great.

Thanks!