Windows page file on an SSD

[zmaster]

hi guys
should i disable it or leave like 100mb on it?
old school user here

 

[Elixer]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2069761
Or, in other words, leave it, unless you are exceeding 10GB of writes per day on the SSD.

 

[bbhaag]

For along time I limited my page file to 1gig and it worked really well. First on my 60gb Plextor, then on my 240gb Kingston, and finally on my current 240gb M500.
I recently had to increase it to 2gig because Start Citizen was complaining about running out of ram even though I have more than enough. My advice is to limit it to 1gig and see how it performs. If Windows or certain applications start to complain increase it as needed.

 

[zmaster]

cool thanks
set it to 1gb

 

[bbhaag]

Hey np. Here's a screen cap that I took that you might find useful. I've found this works best for me but everyones setup is different. Best of luck with your SSD.:thumbsup:

 

[ArisVer]

@ bbhaag

Why limit the pagefile if you have enough space, I mean what's the benefit?

 

[kasakka]

I see no reason to do anything to the page file except make sure it's on your fastest drive. Let Windows manage the rest.

 

[Berryracer]

don't touch the page file unless you are looking for trouble

 

[therealnickdanger]

Just leave it alone and let Windows deal with it.

 

[Stuka87]

cool thanks
set it to 1gb

Do not do this unless you want to decrease the performance and reliability of your system. Let windows handle it.

 

[Railgun]

don't touch the page file unless you are looking for trouble

Why? I've been disabling mine for a few years now. No issues.

If you have enough RAM...it's a non issue. The only issue is you don't necessarily get a memory dump if you blue screen.

 

[jkauff]

Why? I've been disabling mine for a few years now. No issues.

If you have enough RAM...it's a non issue. The only issue is you don't necessarily get a memory dump if you blue screen.

I have 16GB of RAM. I also have a widget that monitors RAM usage, and I very often see activity on the page file even though less than 4GB of RAM is in use. I assume it's poorly written software that's causing the activity, so I keep a modest page file on my SSD just for these programs.

 

[Da_Gut]

I've never seen any (measurable) benefit to managing the swap file. But then I've never seen any harm come from managing it either. So, personally, I don't worry about it.

 

[bbhaag]

@ bbhaag

Why limit the pagefile if you have enough space, I mean what's the benefit?

Fewer writes on the SSD mainly. Is was more of a concern when ssd's just came out though. Now I do it just to tinker around and tweak the OS because computers are one of my hobbies.

I ran Win7 and Win8 for several years with a 1gig pagefile and never noticed any draw backs to doing so. If someone can provide actual proof that doing so does I'll gladly take a look at it.

 

[aigomorla]

@ bbhaag

Why limit the pagefile if you have enough space, I mean what's the benefit?

lets look at a system with SSD where page file is enabled on that ssd.

windows will allocate the equal amount of space on SSD that you have ram.

So lets assume ur running 8gb of ram... then windows will allocate 8gb of page file.

This is for crash dumps to be written on said page, as windows takes a copy of entire ram and posts it as a page file.


now heaven forbid u have a 128gb ssd... but assume you have a small space SSD.

So taking off 8GB of the 128gb in the SSD is kinda hurtful... now add in provisioning... which will be about 12gb... usually its 10-20%, but for sake arguement lets put down 10%...

12+8 = 20gbs out of the 128GB u have... that leaves u with 108gb...

well in short it eats storage capacity unless u moved the page file on another drive.


So the concensensus.... if ur running a high ram system... like 16gb-24gb-32gb-64gb, chances are u will NEVER end up using the page file, unless u do work on the machine with data sets in excess greater then the ram.

If thats the case, people will tell you get more ram, as having to read ram is a LOT faster then having to read a page file.

But should i disable it?
NO... reason again... crash reports are copyed via to page file...
Although u dont need windows to take a entire copy of your ram, a regular crash report can take 800MEGS.

So people usually recommend u leave page file @ 512-2048 for said crash reports.... this will also conserve stroage space on a low cap ssd.. 2gb max vs 8gb max...


This ONLY applies to a gaming machine / home machine...
A SERVER is a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT story...
I would let windows handle a server page file.... and not touch it... as u would want to see the entire crash report on a server if and when it does crash..

 

[Cerb]

I have 16GB of RAM. I also have a widget that monitors RAM usage, and I very often see activity on the page file even though less than 4GB of RAM is in use. I assume it's poorly written software that's causing the activity, so I keep a modest page file on my SSD just for these programs.

Applications can't access the page file. Windows attempts to push data into the page file long before it really needs it, figuring that some set of memory not touched in a long time also won't be touched any time soon. Then, when it needs to use more RAM, it can discard that data in RAM, with no disk IO activity.

This behavior not being weighted by actual user activity, however. Windows keeps doing that regardless of user activity, then background programs ask for RAM, eventually causing some useful program data to get removed, and that cycle over the course of hours is part of what makes many PCs slow if they've sat idling all day or night.

 

[aigomorla]

yeah but cerb there is no need to let windows handle and allocate ALL of it especialy on a high ram system.

if your system has 16GB+ of ram... it will EAT up a lot of SSD storage capacity...
if you think about it, 16GB can hold that extra game or so... for none seen speed benefit...

I am running 24GB of Ram.... i have set my page file from 512MB-2048MB so i can get my basic crash reports... if my system blue screen's i will not get a crash report, but i will know its probably something that i did via overclocking.

I haven't seen any problems with anything i run....
I think page file was more of a system that was implimented for crash reports, and also a time where ram was really expensive....
But with today's system and how much ram they have... hell AdamK's system has more VRAM then i do SYSRAM even... i think page file is sort of bloated on a desktop gaming system.

 

[Cerb]

Of course. I just have it disabled. I gave it a shot again, when I went SSD, and got into some thrashing within days. I started getting low memory warnings awhile ago, then finally upgraded to 32GB after weirdly losing display output one day (blank gray screen, would flash on ctrl-alt-del, was able to blindly get it to reboot, minutes after one of the warnings, and nothing amiss after the fact in the event logs ).

 

[hhhd1]

I Leave it:

initial size = 100 MB
max size = 20,000 MB

No issues. and I do sometime reach the maximum of page file.

 

[MongGrel]

I turn it off on my SSD RAID array and leave a smaller one on my HDD RAID array, but they are both hardware, works for me.

I keep a smaller page file on a HDD array at any rate, always.

 

[Dufus]

I ran Win7 and Win8 for several years with a 1gig pagefile and never noticed any draw backs to doing so. If someone can provide actual proof that doing so does I'll gladly take a look at it.

What size you need to make the pagefile is very much based on case by case. I used to run with it disabled for many years and had no problems at all whereas with it enabled when running into high memory usage it would cause disk thrashing and virtually lock up the system. I don't have a lot of patience, longest I waited IIRC was 30 minutes before hitting the power button to kill the system and of course sometimes that would result in disk corruption. With it disabled usually there would be a "low memory warning" which means the offending app can be terminated if Windows had not done it itself, a much more controllable environment although these days with an SSD it would be somewhat easier when the system is paging in and out of the disk.

Something also to take into account these days is the graphics card. RAM physical addressing is translated into virtual addressing from protected mode (32-bit) or long mode (64-bit). The amount of addressing available to do this is the "commit limit" which in Windows is a combination of DRAM size plus pagefile size. This addressing is also used for your graphics card, using 1x to 2x the amount of VRAM in use. So if you had a 4GB card and where using 3GB of that then part of your "commit" will be 1x to 2x that (3GB to 6GB). With 8GB of DRAM installed and pagefile disabled that would limit "commit" to 8GB (the DRAM size) meaning you would be left with 5GB to 2GB of addressing for DRAM, the rest of the DRAM no longer addressable. If the pagefile were made 8GB then that would cover you using 4GB of VRAM, worse case, and still being able to use all 8GB of DRAM. Note that the 8GB pagefile would supplement the commit limit and when used to provide the extra addressing for the graphics card will not result in actually writing to the pagefile on disk.

Now imagine a Titan-X owner who wishes to use 12GB of VRAM!!!

 

[bbhaag]

nvm