Is there a big performance hit with no paging file?

[bladephoenix]

Hi. I have invested a great deal of time and money on my rig, and I am starting to freak out at the BSOD's I've been getting. Initially, I was getting a truck load of them (along with regular program crashes), but I had upgraded my ram from 1GB CAS 3 Kingston RAM to some quality OCZ 2GB RAM.

However, I have still gotten 2 BSOD's since I got my new RAM. The latest of which is:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

It references emu10klm.sys (which is a driver for a SB sound module if I'm not mistaken)

I read that disabling the paging file in Windows XP can resolve this issue.

My question is whether disabling this paging file will cause a performance drop?

On an off note, I am starting to really hate DFI mobos...

 

[HO]

If you have to disable the pagefile to make your soundcard driver work, you need a new soundcard.

There is a wealth of info on the net about what can generate the error you've seen; take a look around. One thing to try first is rebuilding your pagefile. A series of BSOD events can corrupt the PF, causing even more BSODs. To do the rebuild, set PF to None, reboot, reconfigure your PF, reboot.

 

[stevty2889]

Well I would certainly run memtest first to make sure the new memory is 100% stable, however, SB cards have hideous drives that cause problems like that, so perhaps you should give the onboard sound a try for a while to see of the BSOD goes away if memtest passes with no trouble.

 

[dguy6789]

Pagefile would not cause you issue. As suggested above, run memtest. I also recommend running 24 hours of prime 95. If either one of them errors even once, you have found a problem.

 

[bladephoenix]

I had run memtest for 12 hours when I first got the RAM just to make sure it was completely stable -- no errors. In addition, the reason I got the particular modules I did was because they were specifically named on DFI-Street as being recommended on their list of compatible modules. I also used the BIOS settings posted on DFI-Street for OCZ memory. So I don't think that the memory itself would be the problem. I don't think that the memory is an issue...it might be the mobo that complains a bit if the settings are just a little off, but I don't think that that would likely be the case either. In any case though, I disabled the PF just to play it safe for a while.

But I was wondering if disabling the PF causes a performance drop of any kind...

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: bladephoenix
I had run memtest for 12 hours when I first got the RAM just to make sure it was completely stable -- no errors. In addition, the reason I got the particular modules I did was because they were specifically named on DFI-Street as being recommended on their list of compatible modules. I also used the BIOS settings posted on DFI-Street for OCZ memory. So I don't think that the memory itself would be the problem. I don't think that the memory is an issue...it might be the mobo that complains a bit if the settings are just a little off, but I don't think that that would likely be the case either. In any case though, I disabled the PF just to play it safe for a while.

But I was wondering if disabling the PF causes a performance drop of any kind...

Even if you have sufficient memory in your system to run programs, you should still always have pagefile on. Many, many programs are designed with pagefile in mind and will use the page file, even if it is unnecessary. Programs that expect a pagefile and do not get one have two possible outcomes. They will either put the data that would have gone in pagefile into memory, thus consuming more memory, or, they will crash. Either way, you need to enable pagefile. Disabling it may be a "quick fix" for some unknown reason, but you really need to find out what is wrong with your system. Try taking out your soundcard, and running your bios at the most stable and conservative settings possible.(No overclocks, at stock or looser memory timings, no excessive HTT bus speed, no rediculously high or low voltages ect..)

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: bladephoenix
I had run memtest for 12 hours when I first got the RAM just to make sure it was completely stable -- no errors. In addition, the reason I got the particular modules I did was because they were specifically named on DFI-Street as being recommended on their list of compatible modules. I also used the BIOS settings posted on DFI-Street for OCZ memory. So I don't think that the memory itself would be the problem. I don't think that the memory is an issue...it might be the mobo that complains a bit if the settings are just a little off, but I don't think that that would likely be the case either. In any case though, I disabled the PF just to play it safe for a while.

But I was wondering if disabling the PF causes a performance drop of any kind...

It will cause a performance hit, if you run out of physical memory, but probably not gonna happen with 2gb of ram.

 

[corkyg]

With 2 GB of RAM, it probably won't be an issue unless you are processing large digital imagery files (i.e., RAW at 10 MB + per file) or video.