Over 1 Gb of RAM

Will increasing the RAM in my computer to over 1 Gb slow my PC down?

 

Can you sys take more than 1Gb? What is your comp some sys specs would help. I really can't see why or how.

 

Linkage....

 

So it looks like the more RAM the better. I have 768 mb installed and the peak commit charge is usually below 768 mb. However I installed a pagefile monitor and found that the PF size is 140 mb (this is with a 482 mb commit charge). So XP is still using the HD. I am thinking of going up to at least 1 gb of RAM to reduce HD usage. I have XP Home up to 4 gbs.

 

I just tried to upload two screenshots re the above but the uploads failed.

 

what ive always been told as for memory/paging/virtual mem is i go to control panel/system/advanced under performance settings/once in performance settings click advanced at the top under virtual memory click change at the bottom is will show recomended size of the page file acording to how much memory you have. whatever it says as recomended i set the same amount for minimum and maximum size. then apply. always works for me without changing it to the recommended size i would get virtual memory low messages and my comp was slower. you may already know all of this its just all i could think of.

 

Here is the screenshot. Interestingly, even with more RAM than the commit charge XP still has hundreds of mgbs in the PF.

 

XP will always use the pagefile. I'm not really sure why but if you have a pagefile it will always be used. If you really want to speed it up, what you do is put something like 2GB of ram into the machien and then disable the pagefile entirely. Of course you can disable the pagefile with only 512MB or even less if you wanted. But running out of ram without a pagefile is not a good idea and can cause lots of problems. However, it's the only way to make a pagefile not get used.

 

I read that if there is no page file there can be no memory dump in a system failure. I am thinking of what would happen if I went over the physical memory while running apps. Would the system crash? If I had wriitten Windows ( I am not a SE) I would have put a backup in for situations like that.

 

From my experience is page file becomes exhausted (empty) then whatever app you are running just freezes and sys becomes sluggish and non-respondant until you restart, a little red sheild appears in the bott rh corner warning you have emptied mem. I ran jv16 2005 and exhausted such mem and this is what occured to me, it's been suggested I suffered a mem leak. I could move mouse and open start menu but no apps would run. I'm no expert here but just stating my personal experience.

 

have you guys tried what i mentioned? from what ive seen any time ive added more memory it changes how the page file should be set up. im no expert by far but it what i was told. for example when i added memory to my comp i installed 2 gigs 4x512 before i adjusted page file size it showed i had somewhere over 2,000 some mb for my system total. i went to the page file setup and it recommends what it should be for how ever much memory is installed. it said recommended page file should be 3,070 mbs. so i changed it to that. now for my total system memory it shows that i have 4,967 mbs total for memory. never got any memory low warnings at all after that. before i changed it to the recommended i got low memory warnings while gaming all the time.

 

If you have 2gb of ram, you don't need a paging file that big, if your system is properly maintained, unless you are working with 500+mb graphics files in Photoshop or something.

Even if you disabled it, Windows would recreate it and resize it as needed, so to be honest, tweaking of the paging file is an exercize in futility.

If you get a warning that your page file is too small, Windows resizes it right then and there.

Mine is system managed. The only "tweak" I did was move it to another drive. That same drive has all of my CD and DVD burn stage areas, too. That way, fragmentation is lessened considerably on my system drive, making maintenance more sensible (to me), and performance up due to my drive becoming less fragmented over time.

 

Thanks for the info Adryalyne , i stand corrected then. I just always did it that way cause someone advised it and then when my machine recommended it i figured it was the way to go. So if i get a low memory warning windows will resize on its own i understand that now, but what if say i got multiple memory low warnings? For every warning i get that means windows has resized it? At some point I'm guessing windows will get it to where it needs or should be. Sorry if i mislead you guys it seemed to work for me so i thought i could help. OH well only way to learn by making mistakes along the way.

 

Well, multiple warnings with a system that has a lot of ram (1gb+) would be cause for concern, unless working with massive files. You figure, to get that warning, you have to blow through 1gb+ of system memory, and most likely 1gb+ of hard disk space. So, yeah, Windows will resize it if needed. That file size will not drop in size until your next reboot, so if Windows has to resize it multiple times, then I'd be concerned you have a nasty memory leak.

Now, the less ram you have, the more warnings you will see under a heavy workload. You def. don't want to have a 512mb paging file, with only 512mb of ram. Windows will resize it befor you know it.


If you are seeing multiple errors over and over, and are certain its not a memory leak, you can resize the page file yourself, to stop the warnings. Or you can let Windows do it

Its personal preference, IMO. Understand, resizing constantly will increase fragmentation.

 

I tried disabling the PF and guess what?! I got a low virtual memory warning and XP increased the PF anyway. So it looks like there is always a PF.

Here is the page with the XP Pagefile monitor download (Under XP utilities):

http://www.dougknox.com/

 

Yup. Hence my previous post.