2 gigs of mem and still accessing HD

[the Chase]

So I stepped up to 2 gigs of memory and just played bf vietnam and my HD "activity light" is lighting up like a Xmas tree(slight exageration). But still, it seems as though I still get a few slight pauses now and then due to my system accessing the HD. Should I turn off virtual memory or would that negatively affect performance.(I've read to never disable virtual memory). Go to 4GB's?? Any thoughts or ideas on this would be great.

 

[RobertR1]

Windows will always use Virtual memory. I suppose you could try disable Virutal mem and see what happens?

 

[MedicalEntropy]

Windows has a compulsive disorder on making page filing bigger than you set it at.

For example: you set it at like 200mb min, 500mb max. It will grow to 900mb, or so.

Only way to stop doing that is to disable it completely.

I would say 2 gigs is safe for shutting off PF/VM. However, I'd be careful when using Photoshop and 3d rendering.

 

[the Chase]

Thanks for the replies- I will try running with it disabled and see how it goes.

 

[Griswold]

You could try to set windows' memory usage from "programs" to "systemcache". You can find that on the same tab as you access the virtual memory / pagefile. This does help with some games that try to have as much data loaded as possible and it seems to prevent windows from writing this data to the pagefile instead of keeping it in RAM. I dont have BF2, so I dont know if it works that game. But it sounds like this is a case where it could be useful.

However, you can also run into problems with other apps that demand lots of RAM if you stick with that setting.

Disabling the pagefile might provoke other problems.

Btw, this thread should have went to the OS forum me thinks.

 

[BFG10K]

You can't disable virtual memory. You can disable the swap file but that's a bad idea.

 

[Leper Messiah]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
You can't disable virtual memory. You can disable the swap file but that's a bad idea.

With 2GB of memory, why? So everyone with less than 2GB total ram, is fscked?

 

[Sc4freak]

Because even with 2gb of RAM, I think the swap file is uspposed to act as a safeguard in case all of the RAM is used up. If it doesn't exist, programs can crash.

 

[BFG10K]

With 2GB of memory, why?

What are you asking? Why you can't disable virtual memory or why you can't disable the swap file?

If it's the former it's because virtual memory is much more than just a swap file (providing features such as memory protection, address remapping, etc) and it's integrated into the Windows memory manager.

If it's the latter then disabling the swap file interferes with the Windows memory manager. Regardless of how much RAM you have there are always good reasons why certain data should be paged at certain times.

Everyone that tries to "tweak" things just breaks them. If the OP is concerned about HD activity during gameplay he should be looking at his system tray/background programs and/or scanning for trojans/worms/viruses.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Do you have two HDD's? Move your page file to the non-OS/app one.

And never disable your page file. Its there for a reason.

 

[the Chase]

Thanks for all the replies-learning a lot. I did disable the swap file and it seemed like it helped. But still had 1 or 2 hiccups with hard drive activety. BFG10K might be right with backround apps? I do have two hard drives-1 with my games and 1 with OS and everything else. It seems like the swap file spanned across both HD's and didn't have the option of running the swap file on only 1 but not the other. No Apps have crashed yet and with 2 gigs and me not a multitasker/profs apps user I doubt it would happen but that doesn't mean I should leave the swap file disabled....