Disable Paging??

Here is a question that I have been mulling for some time. I have done this before and didn't notice much on another system I had. If you have a large amount of RAM, should you go ahead and disable paging thus forcing everything to use RAM memory and not slow things down using the slower HDD for a portion of RAM. I mean, if you have enough RAM, why then do you need paging? I have read both that it is necessary to have paging and it doesn't slow things down and then I have read that it does help speed up the system.

 

Agree with Major Attitude. It's not about 1000000000000 gigs of ram. It's about software. Some poorly written games/apps will not run if there's no hard disk paging file.

 

So, you would say just leave it then. Is there any rule of thumb for setting the page file values that is somewhat standard? Thanks for the info, gentlemen.

 

One your M other B oard has a limit of RAM, new ones are 8Gb and higher, some "Old" MB's could only hold 1Gb so check your MB Stats first, and as MA has pointed out unless your going to go higher than 4Gb forget it, so many Apps are memory Hogs. I have not heard of an App crashing with 8Gb and no page filing, but I guess its possible.

Just found this article for reference for others, hope it helps, and I have not tried it so BEWARE:- http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/paging.html
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/V/virtual_memory.html
The two links above explain page filing very simply.

To disable it;
Start/Control panel/System/Advanced
Under the advanced tab you will find performance up the top, click on settings, then advanced. Down the bottom is virtual memory, click change, select the 'No page file' radio button, then 'Set'.
You really need to have plenty of RAM if you are going to do this, or the application hogging the most RAM will crash.
Remember you can always turn Page Filing back on if you have a problem, so if you have 4Gb of RAM or higher give it a go and see if YOU like it. Good luck.

 

Thanks. Nah, I'm not gonna touch it, but I did have that setting on an old laptop a while back and only 1 program had a problem, but I couldn't tell any difference one way or the other. The thing that confuses me is I understand that page filing can be necessary, but why is there ALWAYS some amount of page file usage when it is not even needed. Page filing should be used by the OS only when needed, otherwise should go strictly through RAM. To illustrate this point I will refer anyone here to a program called "Cacheman" that I have been using for some time. Great free program from cnet, it optimizes all forms of cache. You can run it in the tray and it will tell you all RAM usage and page file usage too.

On a side note, speaking of cache reminds me of a tip to help give your system just a bit more "pep" that is slightly noticeable. Some of you may already be aware of this, but I have found that some of the most hardcores don't even know this. Windows XP does not come properly set to handle your specific L2 cache. There is a tweak that allows you to set the correct number in the registry as Windows has it set as 256k by default! I got this tip elsewhere, but I would like to refer you to another webpage that lays it out very nicely. Link is as follows: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache...che&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6&client=firefox-a

Give it a try and you will notice slight increase in program load times and a general sense of overall speed. This is particularly true if you have significantly more than 256k of L2 cache. I could have sworn the default was 0 as I remember it! Anyway, if anyone tries it, please let me know what you think and what was the default. I forgot. Good luck!

 

Oh, I should say, just to help clarify, enter the amount of L2 cache you have in k (not MB) and click on the bubble for DECIMAL, not HEXADECIMAL value. Example- if you have 1mb L2, enter 1024 and select decimal. Before you type in any number, though, select click on decimal first, then enter the number. This ensures that it will not default back to Hex.

 

Us "hardcores" happen to know that the L2 cache tweak is a myth and does not actually work.

Search on Google for more information.

Windows itself requires the page file for proper operation. While older versions of Windows could have some performance advantage gained by tweaking, XP does not. The page file should be on and should be set to system managed.

 

I have 2 gigs of RAM and have set pagefile.sys to half a gig. Just checked my System Information for Windows (SIW) and the most it has used today is 92 megs, so far.

SIW is available from http://www.gtopala.com/