Virtual Memory in Windows XP, why do I need it?

[Paveslave]

To my understanding, windows uses a section on your hard drive kind of like RAM. I know

it's slower, mainly because it has to travel through the northbridge and everything else to

get for the CPU to be able to use, hence it's slower. My question is why do I need it with

2 gigs of RAM? I can understand if I had 256 and needed it, but even during a game of

UT2003 I'm only using just over 600 MB of RAM. Couldn't I force windows to just use my

RAM instead of any VM? I don't want it to have the option because I have the available

RAM, and it's quicker than VM, so why shouldn't I use more of it?

 

[Twista]

just turn it off. You got 2gb of ram and when you turn it off... xp actually uses some for SOME programs that need VM in order to work.

 

[spyordie007]

you cant "just turn it off"; it's simply not possible with Windows. Even if you go in and tell it to use "no pagefile" it still creates one.

The only time that it does a lot of "paging" is when you run out of physical RAM so you have no need to even worry about windows usage of the pagefile.

-Spy

 

[dbarton]

Is there best size to a pagefile in XP or is it best tet windows handle the size?

I have 256m of ram.

 

[EeyoreX]

Generally your page file size should be about 1.5 times your RAM amount. This varies however based on personal use. I have 1GB of RAM and have set my pagefile for a min and max size of 512MB. I rarely do anything to fill up my RAM so I don't feel the need to use more. And, has been mentioned, you can't completely disable the pagefile creaion, I figure I'll take some control over it. Also, as was mentioned, if you have 2GB of RAM and don't use it all, the pagefile will not really be used, there is no need to "force" Winodws to do this, it is the way Windows works normally.

\Dan

 

[Nothinman]

Virtual Memory is not the same thing as the pagefile, I really wish MS would fix their misuse of terminology like that.

Disabling the pagefile will gain you nothing because the pagefile won't be used unless you get low on memory, but it may cause problems as some programs require a pagefile. Leave the pagefile system controlled and just don't worry about it, once you finish an OS design course and can write your own VM allocation and paging algorithms you can start questioning Microsoft's decisions.

 

[CTho9305]

All the CS majors and PhDs at microsoft from the nations best schools don't know how to properly set up a page file and how much to use it. Mess with the settings as much as you can.