512 RAM any ideas on swap file settings?

[Felonious]

I know its overkill but ram is cheap so WTF

I have 256 in now but the other 256 stick will be here tomorrow

What should I set virtual memory to?
Or any other advice concerning taking advantage of that much RAM

 

[Need4Speed]

There is an very simple solution for this problem....

Here is what windows does in normal mode, it uses some ram and BEFORE IT RUNS OUT OF RAM, IT STARTS USING THE SWAP FILE. This is bad because the swap is slower. What you want, is to use all the ram first, then use the swap. But how do u tell windows to use all the ram first without turning of the swap? Easy...open your system.ini file and add the follwing under the [386enh] section


ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

Leave the swap file settings at auto, ie let windows take care of it. This switch will ensure that all the ram is used before using the swap...enjoy

 

[Felonious]

Dude thanks I'll try it.

Umm.. how much ram do you have? And is there such a thing as too much?

 

[John]

Need4Speed, does that setting work in Win2K?

 

[Taz4158]

I've used the ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 setting for months and my swapfile is 0.

 

[Lore]

Yeah, I'd like to know if it works in Win2k as well.

From what I could tell, system.ini is for "16-bit app support" according to the first commented line in it.

 

[John]

I remember a huge thread about the swap file a month or so ago, and never read about it working in Win 2K.

 

[Felonious]

Well, I did it and it didn't blow up, so thats good. Back with more after I run 3D Mark and some stuff.

 

[Siren]

is 384 mb enough to use this setting?

 

[PliotronX]

I had some problems with that setting and running some games (namely UT and Q3)

 

[Leo V]

LOL @PliotronX's sig!

 

[nEoTeChMaN]

While you are configuring the system.ini....set the vcache to 1/4 of your total physical ram. The minimum and maximum should be the same.

 

[AC]

you can read more about this tweak here

Windows98 Memory Management

and

Q223294 - INFO: The Windows 98 PageFile_Call_Async_Manager Service

 

[Lore]

Anybody know if it works in Win2k or not?

edit: I had my swapfile (Win2000) set to 1 mb once, and none of my startup programs would load, even though I had 1GB of memory. Weird.

 

[Taylorm]

yes. someone please answer does this work in win2k?

 

[superbaby]

That ConservativeBlahBlahBlah does not work in Win2k. You can't set the pagefile.sys in Win2k to be under ~5MB, I tried it once and Win2k said on boot that it would increase the pagefile size.

 

[Whitedog]

ConservativeSwapFile=1 is only valid for 9x systems.

Win2K already manages memory well enough, so don't worry about it. K?

I have 384 megs now in W2K and wow it runs Real sweet... Makes Very good use of memory.

I just set my Pagefile min to 100megs and it Never asks for more than that. (funny though, that it complains if I have less than that though.. according to asus prob, it keeps about 85megs paged, which is fine.

I play Deus Ex and it hardly Ever hits the hard drive.. just a few small hits when I zone.

SO, if you're running W2k, just cram more mem in it and let it ride. I'm going to crank this pup up to 768

 

[CyruzTheGreat]

How about creating a virtual ram drive, and put the swap on that ?
300 meggers of ram.

200meg main mem
100meg ram drive for swap..

sounds good to me.

 

[khat]

make a RAMDISK out of one of the 256mb sticks,

devote the ramdisk to the swap file

zoom

(make it 256, because some progs won't run for under that, besides 256 mem is enough for Windows)

cheers
KHAT

 

[NicColt]

Get cacheman to do that vcache automatically. and checkout this 3DRage.com performance article, I did this and it's great so far.

 

[AngelOfDeath]

Don't you try that in win2k...I did...BSOD and hanging and so forth. Managed to get in through F8 and changede the setting back no probs now...

AoD

 

[Pretender]

If you have ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 and you have a perminant swap file of 300MB(min_size==max_size==300MB), it'll still try to use all available physical RAM first, right?

 

[NicColt]

Sorry about that AOD I thought that the article was clear that it's for win98. I think that win2k has some sort of cacheman built-in.

Pretender I would only have a perm swapfile if you had 64Megs or ram or lower or a very very slow hard drive and I think that ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 will only work if windows handles it but I can't confirm that.

 

[Pretender]

The reason for the perminant swap file is that I set it at the beginning of the partition so it gets the lowest access time. I've got 160 MB RAM and I'm sure the system is using less than 100 MB of swap file at most, but to be safe I set it at 300 MB and made it perminant so that it's location won't change.

 

[Felonious]

Well the results are in, It don't help.

I tried all of the above, including the RAMDISK dedicated to swapfile. Every scenario I used with 512 RAM results in a performance loss. (Either of the (2) 256 sticks work the same alone.)

I understand Win2K Pro can handle the extra RAM. Such is not the case with 98.

I did like the Power PC tweak at Power PC tweak at 3DRage

Thanks guys