ribitch

OK, here is my setup:

1.2 GHz t-bird w 266fsb
640 MB PC133
Dual 7200 RPM Maxtor 20.0 GB drives in raid 100 stripe

I just bought 512 MB to make my 640 MB. My question is how big of a swap file should i run? I used to run 1.5 times my system ram. That would make a 960 MB pagefile. What do you recommend for optimal performance?

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Dave_7

I say keep it fixed at 512 MB. Min 512 / Max 512.




Dave.

sho.gun

Yeah, too much will just waste space on your hard drive, 512 is probably good if you already have 640.

TommyBoomfiger

your pagefile *should* be 1.5 x the amount of physical ram, so if you have 512mb you should set your pagefile to 768mb. the lower you set it, the bigger the chance of memory errors. many people are confused by memory errors when they know that they enough memory, but thier pagefile is just too small. i think its a good idea to put your pagefile on a drive which you dont use as much because there is a lot of file swapping between the memory and the pagefile. if ifs on another drive, then your computer will be able to write to the pagefile and do whatever it needs on the other harddrive much more efficiently. you should never set your pagefile lower than the amount of physical ram in your box.

Jeffbx

Chosen has it half right -

DO set your page file on a different drive then the OS if possible. This can avoid an issue called disk contention where the OS is trying to do something at the same time the swap file is trying to read/write. This results in the disk heads hopping back and forth between two different areas on the HD. This was much more of a problem back in the day when RAM wasn't practically free.

However, keep your swap file at 1.5x RAM for a minimum and set the max to about 2-2.5x RAM. The OS will only reserve the minimum amount unless it needs more. By setting it to a fixed amount (same min and max) you risk memory errors.

TommyBoomfiger

Where the hell did my MCSE training go??? Thanks for the reminder Jeff, this is exactly what the pagefile settings should be, and this is what windows should automatically set it at so you really dont need to intervene.

ribitch

thanks for the help. I have it set at 960 MB. I have a 10 gig drive that i think i might throw in and move the swap file there.

qmanchu

Whoa, hold on a second here guys. I thought this 1.5x (min) to 2.0x (max) swapfile was only applicable back in the days of Windows 3.x. I mean, are you telling me that if I filled my motherboard to a max of 2GB of RAM, I should be setting aside 3.5GB as a minimum? Sounds a bit extreme if ya ask me.

TommyBoomfiger

yeah that does seem a little extreme, but thats the way its supposed to be. if you dont, you will probably have memory allocation problems. i didnt think much of this when i bought 1 gig (up from 128) i started to have some major memory issues. it seemed kind of strange to me that with 1 gig, i would get all these problems, but it turned out to be the pagefile.

Jeffbx

That's right - here's the scoop from MS:

http://support.microsoft.com/support.../Q197/3/79.ASP