• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Swap file vs 1 gig of RAM

W

Wekiva

Senior member
A friend of mine has been building my computers for several years and has always been real successful at building good machines that are trouble free. He has been telling me for a year that I should go from 512 to 1GB of ram and get rid of my swap file. He has been doing this for a year and says it's great...no hitting to the hard drive ever. So I did this and under his direction went into System Properties/Advanced/Performance and set my virtual memorty to 0. Things went well for a night of playing Desert Combat but didn't go so well today. I got dumped out of the game and was told my virtual memory was too low to contine and that some apps would not perform properly (I think it called it virtual memory in warning). Has my friend led me astray? What is the best way to take advantage of 1GB or ram?

Thanks
 
Don't set your page file to 0, you need it.

Windows should automatically allocate memory to programs that need it... let the operating system do its job.
 
Well w/ a system like mine:
P4 2.6mhz
1GB ram
Radeon 9800 pro
winxp pro
200GB hard drive

...what would be the best size for the swap file?
 
Don't set your swap file to zero if your going to play bf/dc, even with a gig. BF is well known to be a memory hog. So, yes your friend has led you astray. Like Abos said, let windows allocate it. It won't be done often with a gig.
 
Some programs, like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, will hit your swapfile no matter how much memory you have. On some occasions your computer will crash with a swapfile set to zero. Some people will set a static swapfile of 512MB since it is rare to go over that amount when you have >512MB of memory. As one member suggested, let Windows manage the swapfile.
 
Even if you set your pagefile size to zero, if Windows needs one it will create one. As was said already (just to reinforce for you here) some other programs need one too. Let Windows manage it. Or else do as was suggested and set it to the same minimum and maximum size. Just don't set it too low, and zero is way beyond too low.

\Dan
 
Let windows manage it. Then set the high low the same as what window sets it. had it set to system managed size. Then windows does something and now it's set custom minimum 768MB max is 1536MB. I'm probably setting my min max the same 1536MB . Only using 512MB ram see what windows sets it to with your 1GB.
 
Windows isn't a good judge, if at all -that is it is probably just using a simple equation based on physical memory. The average schmuck installs 1GB memory because it is enough to avoid paging. If a pagefile of 1.5x as much was still necessary then they did not install enough. Rare case. So, in general, the pagefile must only be set to a minimum to satisfy those older/crappy programs that mistakenly expect or require a large pagefile. 500MB should be ample to satisfy that and to lessen fragmentation the min/max should be fixed at that and with a good defragger can be maintained as contiguous.
 
I have disabled the swap file entirely and have no problems (been doing this ever since XP was released). Yes, it does depend on which programs/games that you run. I had no problems on my P3-850 w/512MB with the swapfile disabled. I always have web broswer, email client, newsgroup reader, TV tuner, and SETI running in the background. The only time I received low memory errors was during DVD video encoding. All I had to do was close down 2 or 3 apps before doing the video encoding. With my new machine P4C-3.4 w/1024MB, I no longer receive any low memory errors with the swapfile disabled when all 6 programs are running at the same time. I don't play games with my PC, so I'm unsure about how much memory hogs BF1942 and other games are.

The benefit of disabling the swapfile is how much more responsive your system becomes when you are swapping between multiple programs.
 
Originally posted by: eelw
I have disabled the swap file entirely and have no problems (been doing this ever since XP was released). Yes, it does depend on which programs/games that you run. I had no problems on my P3-850 w/512MB with the swapfile disabled. I always have web broswer, email client, newsgroup reader, TV tuner, and SETI running in the background. The only time I received low memory errors was during DVD video encoding. All I had to do was close down 2 or 3 apps before doing the video encoding. With my new machine P4C-3.4 w/1024MB, I no longer receive any low memory errors with the swapfile disabled when all 6 programs are running at the same time. I don't play games with my PC, so I'm unsure about how much memory hogs BF1942 and other games are.

The benefit of disabling the swapfile is how much more responsive your system becomes when you are swapping between multiple programs.
Click to expand...

What happens though when you do manage to eat up all the RAM? I was working on a collage of high res pictures, and the RAM usage for the program was 615MB. Trying to use the clipboard then on top of that put the RAM usage to over 1.2GB for just the one program - I've got 1GB. All that was used, and then the swapfile on top of that. If the swapfile is disabled, I'd just get an out-of-memory error?
I'd just assume it'd be best to leave it enabled; I set mine to 1GB max and min. That way, Windows devotes no overhead to determining how big the swapfile should be, and it's always there when I need it.
 
The benefit of disabling the swapfile is how much more responsive your system becomes when you are swapping between multiple programs.
Click to expand...

What? There won't be any difference assuming that you haven't run out of memory. The only time windows moves program data out of memory is if it runs out or if a program has been inactive for a very long time (I know this was a feature of older NT kernels, don't know how much of it was carried into xp). When you're using less memory than you actually have there should be no difference in performance as the swap file won't actually be used (well, windows may back up memory to swap here and there but it won't move anything right out of memory during ordinary desktop usage.
 
Originally posted by: kamper
The benefit of disabling the swapfile is how much more responsive your system becomes when you are swapping between multiple programs.
Click to expand...

What? There won't be any difference assuming that you haven't run out of memory. The only time windows moves program data out of memory is if it runs out or if a program has been inactive for a very long time (I know this was a feature of older NT kernels, don't know how much of it was carried into xp). When you're using less memory than you actually have there should be no difference in performance as the swap file won't actually be used (well, windows may back up memory to swap here and there but it won't move anything right out of memory during ordinary desktop usage.
Click to expand...

One would think that Windows would be smart enough to manage free memory, unfortunately this is not the case. Windows will swap out background tasks to virtual memory even if there is still memory free. Even if you try that reg hack to tell Windows to use the swap file only when you run out of system memory, I still see some HD trashing when swapping between apps. I don't see any HD activity and the apps instantaneously switch when I have the swap file completely disabled.
 
yeah nomatter how much memory you get your OS will aventually fill it up and want some swap space
i have 1 gig of mem and when i tryed to rid myself of the swap file in winxp i had the same trouble
basically just set the swap to 256mb or something
you can also put your swap file on a secondary hard drive, which might also help with performance too
 
The benefit of disabling the swapfile is how much more responsive your system becomes when you are swapping between multiple programs.
Click to expand...
This is just wrong. Windows won't swap in this case unless it needs to (ie; you have run out of physical RAM), regardless of if you disable your swapfile. I have 1GB of RAM. I also leave a 768MB swapfile. Guess what, I don't "hit the hard drive" either. Amazing how that works! I leave the swapfile at that size because I occassionally edit graphics and have found I never use more than 512MB of swapfile, so I have left myself some overhead, just in case. By all means, disable your swapfile. Then come back later when you have trouble and ask us why. Most of us will be able to say "told you so". And, in any event, as I said earlier, Windows will create one when it needs one, even if you set it to zero. Know why? Because it needs it. Funny how that works.

\Dan
 
Originally posted by: EeyoreX
By all means, disable your swapfile. Then come back later when you have trouble and ask us why. Most of us will be able to say "told you so". And, in any event, as I said earlier, Windows will create one when it needs one, even if you set it to zero. Know why? Because it needs it. Funny how that works.

\Dan
Click to expand...

Hummm, let's see, I've been running 2 machines at home and one at work for 2 years now with the swap file disabled, and have had not a single problem. The only machine which I use where the swap file is enabled is my laptop which only as 128MB. Funny, even with all your insistance that you can't disable your swap file, that myself, at least 10 others that I have converted to the dark side of no swap files and the friend of the original poster we don't get haunted by BSOD.
 
I ran with 512MB and no swap file\VMem for months and played RtCW:ET, UT2k4, Homeworld 2, etc. Never got above 400MB.

I installed the FarCry demo about 3 hours ago. It wouldn't even finish loading the damn map before it crapped out due to lack of memory. Enabled system Mem management.

Running only the demo and Trillian, I hit just above 675MB. and my page file hit well over 400MB.

I'd say get as much memory as you can afford, and have a small swap file just in case.
 
By all means, disable your swapfile. Then come back later when you have trouble and ask us why. Most of us will be able to say "told you so". And, in any event, as I said earlier, Windows will create one when it needs one, even if you set it to zero. Know why? Because it needs it. Funny how that works.

\Dan
Click to expand...

Hummm, let's see, I've been running 2 machines at home and one at work for 2 years now with the swap file disabled, and have had not a single problem. The only machine which I use where the swap file is enabled is my laptop which only as 128MB. Funny, even with all your insistance that you can't disable your swap file, that myself, at least 10 others that I have converted to the dark side of no swap files and the friend of the original poster we don't get haunted by BSOD.
Click to expand...
I never once said you will have BSODs. I do however point to a post above this one that shows exactly my point. I said that Windows will create a swapfile if it needs one. And it will. Period. If a third party application neess the swap space that is different, and may cause errors or the inability to run things. Also, try reading/quoting my entire post. I never said you can't disable your swapfile, and in fact implied you could, but that it isn't a good idea.

\Dan
 
Just like EeyoreX said, having no swapfile will not prevent NT from swapping out to "virtual memory." Period. If Windows needs to swap, it will, file or no 🙂
 
There was a very good discussion on Xtremesystem Forums a while back where most all configurations relating to swapfile and XP were benched by posters. The common consensus is that XP uses swapfile if it wants to, despite what you tell it. The set size of the swapfile made virtually zero statistical difference in disk speed, or program loading speed. The fixed versus non fixed size made no difference. Eliminating it made no difference. The only thing that did anything was to file server optimize, and even then, it was minimal in the big scheme of things. The all-around fastest was to check the box letting windows take over, instead of the default minimum to maximum setup that you have when you load XP and don't configure the swap file settings.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top