To Swap or not to Swap?? To increase RAM or not to be??? Leo says on tech tv..,,..

[tornado666]

I gota abit be62 pentium 3 700e at 933, gef 2 etc....blah blah

Just wondering....What do you guys think about swap files in win98se?? I've heard to make a swap file double the size of your system RAM i.e. 256 - 256 with 128mb(which is how much RAM i have)

My hookup in town can get me Micron PC133 128meg for 28 bucks a stick.. so i was gonna up to 256megs... Leo on Tech TV said that you should let windows manage your memory settings(not like he's an expert but pretty knowledgable hehe).. Should I change my swap file to 512mb once i get 256mb ??? Or should i leave it alone.. I already have windows set to run as network server which is supposed to make better memory allocation but i cant tell diff..

Guru advice?? deep philosophical maxims encouraged =)

 

[vash]

Leave the swap file alone, it doesn't do much harm, so its fine as-is. If you want to mess with it, set the paging file to a specific size. I usually leave it alone, but if I want to make it permanent, I make a huge one (1 gig is enough) so I never bother with it again.

vash

 

[IamDavid]

I would leave the swapfile at 256. Then read this thread here. Thread.

 

[Galadala]

NEVER let Windows manage your swapfile, it seems to increase its size only when you are doing something important and it slows your computer down to snail speed whilst doing it.

I would set the swapfile to 300 or 350 MB. But it depends on what you do with your computer. If you play around with large graphics or webpages or have lots of HD space, I would set it at 512. If not then you can leave it as low as 256.

Also note that Leo has a little speaker in his ear telling him what to say and do...

 

[tornado666]

thanks for replies but that thread i think was wrong one... can you give it to me again??

 

[Shack70]

I set mine to 2.5 times the amount of ram. By not letting windows handle the swap, you system doesn't keep resizing your swap, so it has less work to do....

 

[Pakman]

LOL, I bet the person relaying the information to Leo is reading it straight off of the Anandtech forums... hehehe... Alot of the stuff they talk about seems to corrilate with what's going on in forums currently.

 

[IamDavid]

The link I gave you eplains who to tweak your Win98 system so it it forces windows to use the actual ram before making a swapfile .

Here is how.

Search you Windows dir. for the system.ini file and open it up.
Under the 386 Enhanced section add this line:

ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1

 

[Topochicho]

the 2.5 doesn't apply to you it applied to me 2 years ago, but its for a different way of computing.

Just 2 years ago memory was expensive. I paid $88 for 16MB of noname mem 5 years ago and I got a damn good deal on it. At $6 a MB you didn't tend to buy more memery than you needed. So you bought what you needed and set your swap to handle the times when you just completely busted out of your norm.

At $.40 a MB you can buy so damn much ram that you can use sticks to level out the coffee table...

Set your swap to 256MB and if you find yourself running out of memory, pull 256MB out from under the coffee table or buy another stick.

Even with MS Visual C++ compiling and a couple other apps open on win2k as administator, I rarely hit 256.

you really have to be handling some major files and be relly short on money to run with a big swap.

 

[DisposableHero]

does this work for win2k too?