Optimum page file size for 1 GB?

I just upgraded my Athlon 1800 512 MB to 1 GB. Is there any general
consensus on the 'best' setting I should use for page file please? I
recall a few years ago much debate/controversy over this, but wonder
if a consensus has now emerged? My CPU is now slow by today's
standards (runs at 1533 MHz), so I naturally want to get the most out
of this extra RAM.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

Terry Pinnell wrote:

I just upgraded my Athlon 1800 512 MB to 1 GB. Is there any general
consensus on the 'best' setting I should use for page file please? I
recall a few years ago much debate/controversy over this, but wonder
if a consensus has now emerged? My CPU is now slow by today's
standards (runs at 1533 MHz), so I naturally want to get the most out
of this extra RAM.


I think the consensus is, for almost all XP desktop PCs, to let the OS
control the size dynamically.

--
Cheers, Bob

Previously Bob Willard wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

I just upgraded my Athlon 1800 512 MB to 1 GB. Is there any general
consensus on the 'best' setting I should use for page file please? I
recall a few years ago much debate/controversy over this, but wonder
if a consensus has now emerged? My CPU is now slow by today's
standards (runs at 1533 MHz), so I naturally want to get the most out
of this extra RAM.


I think the consensus is, for almost all XP desktop PCs, to let the OS
control the size dynamically.

Not at all. Good performance requires a static size. No control
by the OS then.

Arno

Arno Wagner wrote:

Previously Bob Willard wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

I just upgraded my Athlon 1800 512 MB to 1 GB. Is there any general
consensus on the 'best' setting I should use for page file please? I
recall a few years ago much debate/controversy over this, but wonder
if a consensus has now emerged? My CPU is now slow by today's
standards (runs at 1533 MHz), so I naturally want to get the most out
of this extra RAM.


I think the consensus is, for almost all XP desktop PCs, to let the OS
control the size dynamically.

Not at all. Good performance requires a static size. No control
by the OS then.

Arno

Thanks both. Hmm, so I suspect things haven't changed then - still no
consensus!

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

Not quite. It doesn't hurt much to have a static PF larger than necessary,
but it's no better than to have Windows extend the PF as needed. A pagefile
is not shrunk back when extra is no more needed, so there is no penalty of
changing the size back and forth.
The only issue is that the PF may get slightly fragmented. As long as it's
not tens of pieces, it should not hurt.

One issue (important mostly to kernel component developers) is that the
pagefile should be at least as big as RAM size, to allow full crash dump.
Even for normal users, some crappy video drivers sometimes crash, and to
allow automated post-mortem analysis, the crash dump needs to be saved.

"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
...
Previously Bob Willard wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

I just upgraded my Athlon 1800 512 MB to 1 GB. Is there any general
consensus on the 'best' setting I should use for page file please? I
recall a few years ago much debate/controversy over this, but wonder
if a consensus has now emerged? My CPU is now slow by today's
standards (runs at 1533 MHz), so I naturally want to get the most out
of this extra RAM.


I think the consensus is, for almost all XP desktop PCs, to let the OS
control the size dynamically.

Not at all. Good performance requires a static size. No control
by the OS then.

Arno

"Annie Wagner" wrote in message ...
Previously Bob Willard wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

I just upgraded my Athlon 1800 512 MB to 1 GB. Is there any general
consensus on the 'best' setting I should use for page file please? I
recall a few years ago much debate/controversy over this, but wonder
if a consensus has now emerged? My CPU is now slow by today's
standards (runs at 1533 MHz), so I naturally want to get the most out
of this extra RAM.


I think the consensus is, for almost all XP desktop PCs, to let the OS
control the size dynamically.

Not at all. Good performance requires a static size. No control
by the OS then.

Annie

What a ****ing maroon.

The only version of windows this was valid for was Win 3,
where permanent, contigous pagefile bypassed FAT and
had lower overhead than the temporary pagefile.

Previously Terry Pinnell wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:

Previously Bob Willard wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

I just upgraded my Athlon 1800 512 MB to 1 GB. Is there any general
consensus on the 'best' setting I should use for page file please? I
recall a few years ago much debate/controversy over this, but wonder
if a consensus has now emerged? My CPU is now slow by today's
standards (runs at 1533 MHz), so I naturally want to get the most out
of this extra RAM.


I think the consensus is, for almost all XP desktop PCs, to let the OS
control the size dynamically.

Not at all. Good performance requires a static size. No control
by the OS then.

Arno

Thanks both. Hmm, so I suspect things haven't changed then - still no
consensus!

Hehe. Here is one rule of thumb that I use: Swap should be the same size
as the main memory, but not larger than 256MB, since it then starts to
take forever to actually use it.

My Linux currently runns swappless without issue. For XP, I think
I have 250MB static size.

Arno

Previously Alexander Grigoriev wrote:
Not quite. It doesn't hurt much to have a static PF larger than necessary,
but it's no better than to have Windows extend the PF as needed. A pagefile
is not shrunk back when extra is no more needed, so there is no penalty of
changing the size back and forth.
The only issue is that the PF may get slightly fragmented. As long as it's
not tens of pieces, it should not hurt.

One issue (important mostly to kernel component developers) is that the
pagefile should be at least as big as RAM size, to allow full crash dump.

Well, If you are a developer....

Even for normal users, some crappy video drivers sometimes crash, and to
allow automated post-mortem analysis, the crash dump needs to be saved.

I don't think that is relevant for most users.

Arno


"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
...
Previously Bob Willard wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

I just upgraded my Athlon 1800 512 MB to 1 GB. Is there any general
consensus on the 'best' setting I should use for page file please? I
recall a few years ago much debate/controversy over this, but wonder
if a consensus has now emerged? My CPU is now slow by today's
standards (runs at 1533 MHz), so I naturally want to get the most out
of this extra RAM.


I think the consensus is, for almost all XP desktop PCs, to let the OS
control the size dynamically.

Not at all. Good performance requires a static size. No control
by the OS then.

Arno

Michael Cecil wrote in
:

On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:52:26 -0700, "Eric Gisin"
wrote:

"Annie Wagner" wrote in message
...
Previously Bob Willard wrote:
Terry Pinnell wrote:

I just upgraded my Athlon 1800 512 MB to 1 GB. Is there any
general consensus on the 'best' setting I should use for
page file please? I recall a few years ago much
debate/controversy over this, but wonder if a consensus has
now emerged? My CPU is now slow by today's standards (runs
at 1533 MHz), so I naturally want to get the most out
of this extra RAM.


I think the consensus is, for almost all XP desktop PCs, to
let the OS control the size dynamically.

Not at all. Good performance requires a static size. No
control by the OS then.

Annie

What a ****ing maroon.

The only version of windows this was valid for was Win 3,
where permanent, contigous pagefile bypassed FAT and
had lower overhead than the temporary pagefile.

Exactly. A pagefile of 250MB? Perhaps, if you only have that
much RAM. How can memory swap to the pagefile, if the pagefile
is less than the amount of RAM? You need at least as much
pagefile as you have RAM.
Nonsense.


Damn. There needs to be a way to killfile morons off the entire
Internet.
Indeed.

Then it's like you don't have a swapfile at all.
Windows is using different physical to pagefile mapping. First, it doesn't
allow overcommit, unlike *ix OSs. All committed pageable RAM pages map to
pagefile pages. As soon as a page needs to be swapped out, it's written to
PF. Then the RAM page becomes free to read another page.

Bottom line, total virtual memory size is NOT RAM+PF. It's max(RAM, PF).

"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
...
consensus!

Hehe. Here is one rule of thumb that I use: Swap should be the same size
as the main memory, but not larger than 256MB, since it then starts to
take forever to actually use it.

My Linux currently runns swappless without issue. For XP, I think
I have 250MB static size.

Arno