It's not 2001 now. Save your money.
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A Better Way To Do The Windows Pagefile
- Thread starter rezerekted
- Start date
It's not 2001 now. Save your money.
"Disabling" the Page File doesn't actually disable paging, it just forces Windows to use a 1:1 Virtual
hysical Address mapping; every Virtual memory allocation is mirrored in physical memory. This frees you from any actual paging...until you run out of RAM and BSOD. And before you proclaim "I have 32GB of RAM", remember applications are free to use more then 2GB address space now. On Win32, a memory leak would just lead to a 0xC005 and an application crash long before you ran out of address space, but Win64 will quite happily eat all 32GB of RAM. Just saying, though we all know the best devs on the planet will ensure their products launch free from all possible memory leaks.
There's basically zero benefit to touching the page file anyway; the system only pages when it needs too, specifically, when it needs RAM freed up.
hysical Address mapping; every Virtual memory allocation is mirrored in physical memory. This frees you from any actual paging...until you run out of RAM and BSOD. And before you proclaim "I have 32GB of RAM", remember applications are free to use more then 2GB address space now. On Win32, a memory leak would just lead to a 0xC005 and an application crash long before you ran out of address space, but Win64 will quite happily eat all 32GB of RAM. Just saying, though we all know the best devs on the planet will ensure their products launch free from all possible memory leaks.There's basically zero benefit to touching the page file anyway; the system only pages when it needs too, specifically, when it needs RAM freed up.
defaultluser
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SSDs are better served by a dynamic swap file. They're largely unaffected by fragmentation, and if you set a low value you can save tens of GBs. If you set a low value of 1GB like I do, you will RARELY see it go above that.
primetime
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lol So pretty much what windows does by default (System Managed) ?...task manager shows mine at 368MB (Paged Pool) usage atm
...under advanced its says 2432MB for all drives. Must be what "System Managed" used for Max size i guess? Im guessing windows knows how to manage page files with ssds by now lol.
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D
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It's funny to me whenever someone says that 'cause if you fire up Resource Monitor and you watch the Disk activity for any given length of time, usually within 30 minutes but it really does depend on what you're doing, you will see activity regarding the page file - if you have no apps running at all, just the basic OS, then this won't be as noticeable but if you're running apps, especially multiple ones at the same time, then it will definitely be noticed.
So the idea that it only pages when necessary flies in the face of what I mentioned earlier that the virtual memory subsystem is always there by design and it gets used vastly more often than the majority realized. Again, the page file is just one of the components and not everything which is what so many people still inaccurately believe, to them when you say "page file" they think "virtual memory" in the sense that it's the entire thing but it's not, it's just one part of a rather complex subsystem at work.
Windows and all other modern OSes are designed to page data all the time, not just "when necessary" but because it typically amounts to very small amounts - a page of memory is still considered to be 4K aka 4096 bytes - the fact remains that it does happen and it happens all the time, not just "when necessary."
Semantics, probably, and yes having extremely fast storage mitigates the effect that once would cause massive issues with performance but, even the best processors today rely on the concept of virtual memory supported by the OS and still limited with that "only read or write at one time, not both" hardware limitation. If we ever get to a point where some kind of RAM or storage technology (or both) is developed that can do multiple actions at the same time geez, that'll make a huge difference in terms of performance.
That's probably still the most crippling single aspect of performance with modern single computers: even with the most advanced processors, the fastest RAM, and the fastest storage the machines are still basically and technically doing just one thing at a time.
OK. This old dog just learned a new trick.lol So pretty much what windows does by default (System Managed) ?...task manager shows mine at 368MB (Paged Pool) usage atm
defaultluser
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lol So pretty much what windows does by default (System Managed) ?...task manager shows mine at 368MB (Paged Pool) usage atm
No, it doesn't work that way. System managed always promises "it could get as small as 16MB," but invariably you see Windows wasting 16GB of swap space on a machine with 16GB ram
Maybe this changes on Windows 10?
You have to take control and set the min/max ranges yourself if you want it to go to that "advertised" minimum size range. I NEVER see my swap file go above the minimum I specified, even when gaming. And if it ever needs more, that's why I set the maximum to something reasonable. Just not 16 fucking GB!
primetime
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It actually could be a win 10 thing i guess...ill keep an eye on it over a few days of heavy use and see What it doesNo, it doesn't work that way. System managed always promises "it could get as small as 16MB," but invariably you see Windows wasting 16GB of swap space on a machine with 16GB ram
Maybe this changes on Windows 10?
You have to take control and set the min/max ranges yourself if you want it to go to that "advertised" minimum size range. I NEVER see my swap file go above the minimum I specified, even when gaming. And if it ever needs more, that's why I set the maximum to something reasonable. Just not 16 fucking GB!
For what it's worth, 8.1 did the same thing with me (as does Windows 10). Windows sets it around 2.3GB.
defaultluser
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Oh, good then. Microsoft finally figured out what an SSD was
I guess I should have expected they would eventually. They transitioned from a dynamic swap file to fixed size once hard drives got massive, and now that they're smaller and MUCH faster dynamic is the way to go again.
rezerekted
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I actually bought it to test out and in the first game I tested it with (ArmA2) I actually lost 20fps. Steam has already refunded my CC. But if you go and do some research you will learn that this app can help with a number of games and especially people with lower end hardware.
dragonstongue
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didnt read all these posts, myself I just got in the habit of pagefile per HDD/SSD I found performance to be much more consistent and it def helped having a partition just for pagefile use at "leading of disk" i.e short-stroking when it came to HDD, though just having a dedicated page file per disk in the first place was still worth it, I did notice this with now using 2 SSD when I only had the one page file on either/or sometimes it would "hiccup" when heavy load, put pagefile per very rare I ever see this "hiccup" now.
B00nie
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It's very simple. Benchmark your app before and after pagefile tweaks. Then after you find out either nothing happened or your app is slower, return back to normal.
defaultluser
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As a test, I changed my Windows 10 system to "System Managed" on Tuesday after we had this conversation.
It immediately blocked-out 8GB of swap file space for my 8GBr ram machine.
Two days later, the swap allocation is still gargantuan, for a machine that just does web and light file serving. The performance is no better, so I set it back to custom range. It's the only successful way I know to reduce the size of swap.
Now maybe Windows will reduce the size of the swap file dynamically as free drive space decreases, but I'd rather see the CURRENTLY free space marked free. Otherwise I have no idea how much space the swap file is wasting at any given time, since it's hidden.
Windows doesn't have to show me the space is used if it's not currently needed (i.e. stuff on it's way back to disk). It's just using it as a huge OPPORTUNISTIC DYNAMIC CACHE! Windows already does this with SuperFetch, so I'm sure it's possible to do the same on swap.
The only time I should ACTUALLY SEE the swap file sucking down my disk space is when I have too many programed I've loaded that I'm running simultaneously.
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If you have >12gb of ram you don't actually NEED a page file at all, however I think you will find that windows still expects there to be one and some, especially older programs will get bitchy without it.
I can think of only 1 situation where I have turned the page file off.
Computer of a gamer that had 8+gb of ram (which was a LOT back then) and only a physical spinning drive @7200rpm playing fps games.. Even then, the only real difference he saw was massive increases in loading times between maps and such. Not really much difference while actually playing.
I have restricted the size of the page file when I had space limitations, but this problem should not even really come up in a modern system.
I can think of only 1 situation where I have turned the page file off.
Computer of a gamer that had 8+gb of ram (which was a LOT back then) and only a physical spinning drive @7200rpm playing fps games.. Even then, the only real difference he saw was massive increases in loading times between maps and such. Not really much difference while actually playing.
I have restricted the size of the page file when I had space limitations, but this problem should not even really come up in a modern system.
Stop. Just stop.
Perhaps it's different if you change settings after you install, but for me, 8.1 and 10 both set a conservative 2.3GB but are actually using less. That's fine with me.
BinarySynapse
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Same for me. I have 16GB of RAM, and the page file settings were never messed with. It's sitting at 2.37GB.
?
Is there a reason you would absolutely have to have one? I mean it's clearly better, but I don't think it's actually a show stopper if you don't once you get past a certain point.
D
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Disclaimer: I honestly did not mean for this post to get to this size (wall of text incoming) but once I got started well shit, I just couldn't help myself so, if anyone finds this useful great, if not then whatever - it is what it is.
The reason you should have one is because Windows (and every modern OS) is designed to have one, that's the best answer you're going to get (at least from me). Disabling it really isn't possible (Windows will create one if it truly needs one or worse yet your applications/programs will just choke, die, or not start at all in the absence of one).
So again, this isn't about getting rid of the page file, it's about optimizing it for a given configuration. Windows and most other modern OSes (counting all the damned Linux distros in this) are designed as lowest common denominator OSes which means they make them and distribute them in an effort to have an operating system you can install simply and easily on the widest possible hardware configuration base out there - it's not tuned, it's not optimized, it's just designed to be installed and get people started.
With respect to tweaking things in Windows, over the decades now Microsoft has itself gotten more efficient (seriously) at making Windows perform really well even in the lowest common denominator profile that just works on anything it's installed on (for the most part). That doesn't mean the end user cannot improve things, sometimes to dramatic levels depending on their hardware configuration. I italicized and bolded that for a reason and the reason is: not every computer is the same nor is how every user uses a given hardware configuration the same.
There is a big huge difference between tweaking the living shit out of a Windows installation, and I mean everything that possibly can be tweaked on any given machine vs a small but somewhat beneficial one such as the suggestion to put a static page file on each physical drive in a system (because so many people have multiple drives these days).
I know I'll get flack from rezerekted again about "You're a hypocrite because you said this and now you're saying that..." so whatever, I'm trying to clarify things so everyone reading this can comprehend it so I'll repeat that one aspect again: there is a big huge difference between major tweaking going on and a simple change like a static page file per physical drive.
Got that? See the difference there? I sure as hell hope so and I don't expect to be called a hypocrite again for saying it.
So, there's three basic situations here and I'll try to point them out along with the pros/cons for each then you can decide what you think is the best in your given setup with your given hardware configuration and then my own recommendation which you can make use of or blow off completely, your choice as always:
1) The OS default = what the overwhelming majority of people have by default (go figure) because they don't care or don't bother to alter such settings and wouldn't understand the virtual memory subsystem from the page file - to them they are the same thing (and obviously based on the info in this thread they are most certainly not).
Pros: it just works, and you never have to worry about dreaded "out of memory" errors unless you have a machine with 1GB of RAM and you're trying to edit Photoshop images that are 10,000 pixels wide and 10,000 pixels tall or trying to render high definition video with a 5400 rpm hard drive from a USB 1.1 stick or something of that nature.
Cons: not really anything except for how Windows typically handles the creation of the page file. On some people's machines it'll set it to a size that is actually smaller than the system RAM (say 2-4GB on a machine with 8GB of RAM), on other people's machines Windows will make it the same exact size as physical RAM (8GB page file for 8GB of RAM), and on some machines it falls back and does the original ratio of 1.5x physical RAM (12GB page file for 8GB of RAM). The fun thing is it's not set in stone and you as the user can alter those settings, make it dynamically smaller (smaller minimum/larger maximum), or static (same size min/max). The biggest con is that in almost all situations the actual size of the page file becomes a waste of available storage space on a storage device whether it's a hard drive or an SSD - and please, don't move the page file from an SSD to a hard drive (single page file in a full system with multiple drives) - if your system drive is an SSD that is pretty much the best place to put one. Not Microsoft, not Samsung, not Intel, no company that exists today will tell you to not keep a page file on an SSD, none of them will. Tweakers will, of course, but they're tweakers so that's a given.
Recommendation: "leave it alone" applies here pretty strongly but you can improve the situation if you have multiple physical drives by placing a static page file (static meaning it's the same size for the minimum and the maximum so something like 1GB min 1GB max which is my recommended size on most any installation except perhaps an image editing machine for serious Photoshop work or something doing 3D rendering - as for gaming I can't necessarily recommend altering the page file at all aside from (again) making a static one on each physical drive 2GB min/max just in case. For most people with SSDs because they come at a price premium for that storage space, it's precious in many respects and the thought of just allowing some "file" to sit on the drive and perhaps never be used consuming several gigabytes of that precious super fast storage isn't feasible so, again, altering the page file to something static remains my recommendation because a dynamically allocated page file on an SSD just means a delay in operation (even at crazy insane speeds and it's far worse on a hard drive) and more wasted write cycles (even in spite of modern SSDs being able to handle multiple petabytes of writes nowadays for years to come with no issues.
2) The Tweaked Config = this is the one that makes the most sense overall because of the simple (and heavily repeated) fact that modern computer storage devices cannot be used to read and write data simultaneously to single devices. If you have an SSD, say an NVMe SSD that can read data at 1.8GB a second and write it at maybe 1.4GB a second that's damned fast, really freakin' monumentally fast and changing the way computers work by their increased efficiency but but but even with all that speed you still can't read data and write it at the same time. NOW, the obvious retort to this "feature" of modern storage technology from most hardcore computer users is something like "What the fuck do I care, it's so fast I don't give a shit..." or words to that effect. If that's your stance, go back to situation 1 above, use the OS defaults, and be on your merry way. If however you're interested in allowing your machine to operate more efficiently then the tweaked config I'll recommend below will improve things overall - you might not notice it, of course, because your high end battlestation you've perfected is already damned fast as it is and that's just fine, but one thing I've learned over the decades from tweaking machines of all shapes, kinds, sizes, and resources is this: it can always work better.
Pros: more efficient use of your operating system and the hardware it's running on. A static page file placed on each physical drive in your system, whether it's a hard drive or an SSD (of any bus type), will allow Windows to have access to "the page file" at almost any given moment of time based on resource usage - I say that in that manner because say for example you have two drives, an SSD and a hard drive, and at a given moment in time you're copying files from the SSD to the hard drive or vice versa. In a given moment during that process the two drives are busy on their respect buses and so, while one is performing a read operation the other is performing a write operation - now, given that each drive is busy on its respective bus obviously having a static page file on each drive isn't going to be of much use because each drive is busy - they can't read/write at the same time on each bus so, that in some respects should be noted as a con but it's more relevant here in the Pros section in my opinion. The point being that in routine operation at a given moment of time this situation happens with an insane level of frequency, all the time basically but Windows is really good about managing resources (better than most people realize, to be honest) and so if it does need to page some data out of physical RAM it'll do the best it can in any given moment of time with the resources it has available.
The basic Pro gist is: giving Windows multiple page files (which it "sees" as one altogether) is more efficient operation. Consider this analogy: you have boxes that need to be moved into a house from the moving truck. You've got two choices: you can hire one guy to do the job, he can carry a box at a time, or you can hire two guys who can each carry a box at at time, but there's a staircase/hallway that's so thin only one person can be in it at any given moment in time. While that limitation - the restriction of just one mover at a time actually moving boxes (that's data, in case you missed it) - exists, the fact remains that having two movers in the same situation (moving boxes aka data) is still going to result in you getting the overall moving job done faster and more efficiently than just one guy back and forth and back and forth. There will be moments where the movers encounter each other and have to move out of each other's way (can't read/write at the same time) but again in the long run the job gets done faster and more efficiently even in spite of the tiny little interrupts that are sure to happen when things get out of sync.
Cons: nothing really. I mean that, there are no negatives to the Tweaked Config, not one that comes to mind, not one that can be shown would be an actual detriment to performance. It's all positive and I can't imagine a reason not to use it.
Recommendation: I've stated it already multiple times so one last time - a static page file, about 1-2GB in size, per physical drive in a given hardware setup aka "machine" meaning it's either 1GB min/max or 2GB min/max but it is not 1GB min and 2GB max - avoid dynamically allocated page files, that's my recommendation, and I personally use 1GB min/max on any machine I own and it's never ever been an issue, never more, never less, just 1GB min/max. Your system will thank you for making the best use of resources available to it with improved performance overall and more efficient operation start to finish.
3) Disabling the page file entirely = Eh... no. Just don't.
The reason? Because as stated Windows and all modern OSes are really designed and have been for decades now (courtesy of the x86 architecture started long long ago, more specifically the 386 which first introduced the virtual memory mode aka VM86) to make use a "virtual memory" which basically and simply means that it allows the processor to make use of storage (not physical RAM) for relevant data storage that normally would be in physical RAM until a point is reached where there's no physical RAM to work with any longer. Nowadays, with huge amounts of physical RAM available in multiple gigabyte amounts, this isn't so much a problem as it was long long ago with oh, I don't know, 32MB machines with 4200 rpm hard drives with IDE interfaces that didn't even have DMA yet running at 166 MHz with single core processors and slow ass everything - see where I'm getting at? Today's machines are fast, crazy fast by comparison, and storage - which HAS been the bottleneck to overall performance for a long long time - is now finally getting to a point where shit is really fast as it should have been for a long time as well. Having an OS that is disk based (which they all are and have been practically since day one) means it's limited to the storage devices and those frankly have been slow as shit for decades.
But that's not the case anymore, especially with NVMe devices now available cranking out those 1.8GB/second reads and 1.4GB/s writes. It ain't RAM, of course, but it's getting faster which is obviously a good thing for all of us. With respect to the page file well...
Pros: there are no real pros to disabling the page file regardless of how much physical RAM you have in a machine. The majority of the people who preach this eventually do have some issue somewhere along the line - they won't man (or woman) up enough to admit it, they'll stick with the typical "I swear I turned off my page file 5 years ago and it hasn't been a problem since..." would get this kind of response from me almost instantly: "That just means you don't actually do anything serious with your machine because it you really did push it for resources it would have balked on you years ago..." and I say that knowing that 5 years ago having 2GB of RAM was pretty much the standard for most machines, 4GB was something that made you look almost wealthy, and 8GB was just a dream for most people.
Anyway, while it's a never ending argument, the fact remains that Windows is designed to have a page file in operation at all times and will make use of it when necessary. At times when it's not available then it will make do with what it does have resources for, and in some situations the OS itself will balk or the applications/programs you're trying to make use of will balk and by balk I mean crash/die/burn/choke/etc potentially rendering your machine to a complete standstill as the OS desperately tries to scramble data around not only in physical RAM but even in a temporary page file that's only 128MB in size buried in the \Windows directory that not many people ever seem to think exists but it does when it's absolutely needed. I can't prove it to you on your own machines, but Windows will create a 128MB page file temporarily in the \Windows directory as required as a last ditch resort instead of just crashing completely with a BSOD. I've seen it happen many times over the years, but I've never been able to force it to happen so I can show someone "SEE, SEE, I FUCKING TOLD YOU, THERE IT IS..." just as the machine BSODs out on me.
Cons: well, as odd as it sounds, I can't think of any negatives to not disabling the page file (yes that does make sense, actually). As for disabling it, as noted above, I can't find any Pros for it either regardless of how much physical RAM you have. It's up to you to configure your box the way you want it based on what you think will work best in your given situation.
Recommendation: Don't ever disable the page file - instead, take control of it by setting it to a static size as noted in #2 above, get better and more efficient overall system operation in any and all situations and stop worrying about this shit so much.
If you must disable it, so be it. If you truly believe it'll work better for you by being disabled then I can't do Jack Fucking Shit about changing your beliefs no matter how long this post could eventually end up.
I don't recommend it, and neither does Microsoft, neither would any respectable Linux developer - I damned well know Linus Torvalds would never make such a recommendation, nor anyone at Apple coding OSX, and so on. Nor would you find anyone at Microsoft, Intel, Samsung, Corsair, Mushkin, Patriot, OCZ/Toshiba, SanDisk, Western Digital, or any other maker of modern storage devices for personal computers ever make such a recommendation either.
But the tweakers out there, they'll never shut up about it, seriously.
The reason you should have one is because Windows (and every modern OS) is designed to have one, that's the best answer you're going to get (at least from me). Disabling it really isn't possible (Windows will create one if it truly needs one or worse yet your applications/programs will just choke, die, or not start at all in the absence of one).
So again, this isn't about getting rid of the page file, it's about optimizing it for a given configuration. Windows and most other modern OSes (counting all the damned Linux distros in this) are designed as lowest common denominator OSes which means they make them and distribute them in an effort to have an operating system you can install simply and easily on the widest possible hardware configuration base out there - it's not tuned, it's not optimized, it's just designed to be installed and get people started.
With respect to tweaking things in Windows, over the decades now Microsoft has itself gotten more efficient (seriously) at making Windows perform really well even in the lowest common denominator profile that just works on anything it's installed on (for the most part). That doesn't mean the end user cannot improve things, sometimes to dramatic levels depending on their hardware configuration. I italicized and bolded that for a reason and the reason is: not every computer is the same nor is how every user uses a given hardware configuration the same.
There is a big huge difference between tweaking the living shit out of a Windows installation, and I mean everything that possibly can be tweaked on any given machine vs a small but somewhat beneficial one such as the suggestion to put a static page file on each physical drive in a system (because so many people have multiple drives these days).
I know I'll get flack from rezerekted again about "You're a hypocrite because you said this and now you're saying that..." so whatever, I'm trying to clarify things so everyone reading this can comprehend it so I'll repeat that one aspect again: there is a big huge difference between major tweaking going on and a simple change like a static page file per physical drive.
Got that? See the difference there? I sure as hell hope so and I don't expect to be called a hypocrite again for saying it.
So, there's three basic situations here and I'll try to point them out along with the pros/cons for each then you can decide what you think is the best in your given setup with your given hardware configuration and then my own recommendation which you can make use of or blow off completely, your choice as always:
1) The OS default = what the overwhelming majority of people have by default (go figure) because they don't care or don't bother to alter such settings and wouldn't understand the virtual memory subsystem from the page file - to them they are the same thing (and obviously based on the info in this thread they are most certainly not).
Pros: it just works, and you never have to worry about dreaded "out of memory" errors unless you have a machine with 1GB of RAM and you're trying to edit Photoshop images that are 10,000 pixels wide and 10,000 pixels tall or trying to render high definition video with a 5400 rpm hard drive from a USB 1.1 stick or something of that nature.
Cons: not really anything except for how Windows typically handles the creation of the page file. On some people's machines it'll set it to a size that is actually smaller than the system RAM (say 2-4GB on a machine with 8GB of RAM), on other people's machines Windows will make it the same exact size as physical RAM (8GB page file for 8GB of RAM), and on some machines it falls back and does the original ratio of 1.5x physical RAM (12GB page file for 8GB of RAM). The fun thing is it's not set in stone and you as the user can alter those settings, make it dynamically smaller (smaller minimum/larger maximum), or static (same size min/max). The biggest con is that in almost all situations the actual size of the page file becomes a waste of available storage space on a storage device whether it's a hard drive or an SSD - and please, don't move the page file from an SSD to a hard drive (single page file in a full system with multiple drives) - if your system drive is an SSD that is pretty much the best place to put one. Not Microsoft, not Samsung, not Intel, no company that exists today will tell you to not keep a page file on an SSD, none of them will. Tweakers will, of course, but they're tweakers so that's a given.
Recommendation: "leave it alone" applies here pretty strongly but you can improve the situation if you have multiple physical drives by placing a static page file (static meaning it's the same size for the minimum and the maximum so something like 1GB min 1GB max which is my recommended size on most any installation except perhaps an image editing machine for serious Photoshop work or something doing 3D rendering - as for gaming I can't necessarily recommend altering the page file at all aside from (again) making a static one on each physical drive 2GB min/max just in case. For most people with SSDs because they come at a price premium for that storage space, it's precious in many respects and the thought of just allowing some "file" to sit on the drive and perhaps never be used consuming several gigabytes of that precious super fast storage isn't feasible so, again, altering the page file to something static remains my recommendation because a dynamically allocated page file on an SSD just means a delay in operation (even at crazy insane speeds and it's far worse on a hard drive) and more wasted write cycles (even in spite of modern SSDs being able to handle multiple petabytes of writes nowadays for years to come with no issues.
2) The Tweaked Config = this is the one that makes the most sense overall because of the simple (and heavily repeated) fact that modern computer storage devices cannot be used to read and write data simultaneously to single devices. If you have an SSD, say an NVMe SSD that can read data at 1.8GB a second and write it at maybe 1.4GB a second that's damned fast, really freakin' monumentally fast and changing the way computers work by their increased efficiency but but but even with all that speed you still can't read data and write it at the same time. NOW, the obvious retort to this "feature" of modern storage technology from most hardcore computer users is something like "What the fuck do I care, it's so fast I don't give a shit..." or words to that effect. If that's your stance, go back to situation 1 above, use the OS defaults, and be on your merry way. If however you're interested in allowing your machine to operate more efficiently then the tweaked config I'll recommend below will improve things overall - you might not notice it, of course, because your high end battlestation you've perfected is already damned fast as it is and that's just fine, but one thing I've learned over the decades from tweaking machines of all shapes, kinds, sizes, and resources is this: it can always work better.
Pros: more efficient use of your operating system and the hardware it's running on. A static page file placed on each physical drive in your system, whether it's a hard drive or an SSD (of any bus type), will allow Windows to have access to "the page file" at almost any given moment of time based on resource usage - I say that in that manner because say for example you have two drives, an SSD and a hard drive, and at a given moment in time you're copying files from the SSD to the hard drive or vice versa. In a given moment during that process the two drives are busy on their respect buses and so, while one is performing a read operation the other is performing a write operation - now, given that each drive is busy on its respective bus obviously having a static page file on each drive isn't going to be of much use because each drive is busy - they can't read/write at the same time on each bus so, that in some respects should be noted as a con but it's more relevant here in the Pros section in my opinion. The point being that in routine operation at a given moment of time this situation happens with an insane level of frequency, all the time basically but Windows is really good about managing resources (better than most people realize, to be honest) and so if it does need to page some data out of physical RAM it'll do the best it can in any given moment of time with the resources it has available.
The basic Pro gist is: giving Windows multiple page files (which it "sees" as one altogether) is more efficient operation. Consider this analogy: you have boxes that need to be moved into a house from the moving truck. You've got two choices: you can hire one guy to do the job, he can carry a box at a time, or you can hire two guys who can each carry a box at at time, but there's a staircase/hallway that's so thin only one person can be in it at any given moment in time. While that limitation - the restriction of just one mover at a time actually moving boxes (that's data, in case you missed it) - exists, the fact remains that having two movers in the same situation (moving boxes aka data) is still going to result in you getting the overall moving job done faster and more efficiently than just one guy back and forth and back and forth. There will be moments where the movers encounter each other and have to move out of each other's way (can't read/write at the same time) but again in the long run the job gets done faster and more efficiently even in spite of the tiny little interrupts that are sure to happen when things get out of sync.
Cons: nothing really. I mean that, there are no negatives to the Tweaked Config, not one that comes to mind, not one that can be shown would be an actual detriment to performance. It's all positive and I can't imagine a reason not to use it.
Recommendation: I've stated it already multiple times so one last time - a static page file, about 1-2GB in size, per physical drive in a given hardware setup aka "machine" meaning it's either 1GB min/max or 2GB min/max but it is not 1GB min and 2GB max - avoid dynamically allocated page files, that's my recommendation, and I personally use 1GB min/max on any machine I own and it's never ever been an issue, never more, never less, just 1GB min/max. Your system will thank you for making the best use of resources available to it with improved performance overall and more efficient operation start to finish.
3) Disabling the page file entirely = Eh... no. Just don't.
The reason? Because as stated Windows and all modern OSes are really designed and have been for decades now (courtesy of the x86 architecture started long long ago, more specifically the 386 which first introduced the virtual memory mode aka VM86) to make use a "virtual memory" which basically and simply means that it allows the processor to make use of storage (not physical RAM) for relevant data storage that normally would be in physical RAM until a point is reached where there's no physical RAM to work with any longer. Nowadays, with huge amounts of physical RAM available in multiple gigabyte amounts, this isn't so much a problem as it was long long ago with oh, I don't know, 32MB machines with 4200 rpm hard drives with IDE interfaces that didn't even have DMA yet running at 166 MHz with single core processors and slow ass everything - see where I'm getting at? Today's machines are fast, crazy fast by comparison, and storage - which HAS been the bottleneck to overall performance for a long long time - is now finally getting to a point where shit is really fast as it should have been for a long time as well. Having an OS that is disk based (which they all are and have been practically since day one) means it's limited to the storage devices and those frankly have been slow as shit for decades.
But that's not the case anymore, especially with NVMe devices now available cranking out those 1.8GB/second reads and 1.4GB/s writes. It ain't RAM, of course, but it's getting faster which is obviously a good thing for all of us. With respect to the page file well...
Pros: there are no real pros to disabling the page file regardless of how much physical RAM you have in a machine. The majority of the people who preach this eventually do have some issue somewhere along the line - they won't man (or woman) up enough to admit it, they'll stick with the typical "I swear I turned off my page file 5 years ago and it hasn't been a problem since..." would get this kind of response from me almost instantly: "That just means you don't actually do anything serious with your machine because it you really did push it for resources it would have balked on you years ago..." and I say that knowing that 5 years ago having 2GB of RAM was pretty much the standard for most machines, 4GB was something that made you look almost wealthy, and 8GB was just a dream for most people.
Anyway, while it's a never ending argument, the fact remains that Windows is designed to have a page file in operation at all times and will make use of it when necessary. At times when it's not available then it will make do with what it does have resources for, and in some situations the OS itself will balk or the applications/programs you're trying to make use of will balk and by balk I mean crash/die/burn/choke/etc potentially rendering your machine to a complete standstill as the OS desperately tries to scramble data around not only in physical RAM but even in a temporary page file that's only 128MB in size buried in the \Windows directory that not many people ever seem to think exists but it does when it's absolutely needed. I can't prove it to you on your own machines, but Windows will create a 128MB page file temporarily in the \Windows directory as required as a last ditch resort instead of just crashing completely with a BSOD. I've seen it happen many times over the years, but I've never been able to force it to happen so I can show someone "SEE, SEE, I FUCKING TOLD YOU, THERE IT IS..." just as the machine BSODs out on me.
Cons: well, as odd as it sounds, I can't think of any negatives to not disabling the page file (yes that does make sense, actually). As for disabling it, as noted above, I can't find any Pros for it either regardless of how much physical RAM you have. It's up to you to configure your box the way you want it based on what you think will work best in your given situation.
Recommendation: Don't ever disable the page file - instead, take control of it by setting it to a static size as noted in #2 above, get better and more efficient overall system operation in any and all situations and stop worrying about this shit so much.
If you must disable it, so be it. If you truly believe it'll work better for you by being disabled then I can't do Jack Fucking Shit about changing your beliefs no matter how long this post could eventually end up.
I don't recommend it, and neither does Microsoft, neither would any respectable Linux developer - I damned well know Linus Torvalds would never make such a recommendation, nor anyone at Apple coding OSX, and so on. Nor would you find anyone at Microsoft, Intel, Samsung, Corsair, Mushkin, Patriot, OCZ/Toshiba, SanDisk, Western Digital, or any other maker of modern storage devices for personal computers ever make such a recommendation either.
But the tweakers out there, they'll never shut up about it, seriously.
primetime
Supreme [H]ardness
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- Aug 17, 2005
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- 7,306
Now...in my desktop i actually only have the one ssd drive.....Now IF i happened to have a few extra, yea sure i would try it.
D
Deleted member 245375
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Then use #1 with the simple alteration of making the page file static, as in 1GB mnimum / 1GB maximum, or do 2GB min/max if you must but no more than that. I've yet to meet anyone amongst the thousands of people I've worked with over the years that ever had any instances where checking out their hardware showed situations (using Performance Monitor in most instances) where a static 1GB page file hampered performance, not once (been doing this shit for way too long). On some machines I recommended it being 2GB as noted above, those being some pretty serious workstations for image editing and 3D rendering work and it still showed no performance degradation overall even when the machines were pushed to their limits as far as they could sometimes for days on end (3D rendering years ago, boy that took really long periods of time and kept the machines cranked full bore but things are more efficient now on many levels).
With just a single drive the benefits may not be as noticeable IF you were to notice them at all, but at least you've got fast storage - here I am still using physical hard drives in my laptops.
With just a single drive the benefits may not be as noticeable IF you were to notice them at all, but at least you've got fast storage - here I am still using physical hard drives in my laptops.
Windows 10 does seem to be better at managing it. Here is my current page file just doing homework. Seems to be ~5.3gb. They used to get friggen huge.
Thanks for the summary, after some of the posts, I no longer knoew if I was cumming or going :-p
BUT, I do think there is 1 con on #2: I could fuck up the settings! Not a joke, but seriously, we can all make mistakes.
Armenius
Extremely [H]
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- Jan 28, 2014
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- 38,822
Same. On Windows 8.1 with Windows managing the page file it never goes above 2GB with 32GB of physical memory on a 512GB SSD.
bigdogchris
Fully [H]
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- Feb 19, 2008
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- 18,629
I still cannot believe how much debate there is over something so simple.
D
Deleted member 245375
Guest
You think the page file is so troublesome, geez, don't get programmers started on SPACES VS TABS then.
Its not as if Windows comes with a proper instruction manual. I blame Microshaft.
D
Deleted whining member 223597
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God damn it Microsoft, stop sabotaging my page file!
bigdogchris
Fully [H]
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Instructions are not needed when the default setting is fine for 99.9% of users.
rezerekted
2[H]4U
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Where's the fun in that? Only pussies don't tinker.
Monkey God
Mangina Full of Sand
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Tinker all you want, just dont blame Microsoft when you fuck it up.
D
Deleted member 245375
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... or continually ask for help here from others when you choose to muck around with any kind of "performance tuners" or whatever piece of shit software that exists making claims that none of them have ever lived up to and are generally considered to be very bad things overall after they fuck up your already compromised system integrity.
Just wanted to clarify that to some degrees.
rezerekted
2[H]4U
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"Continually" asking for help? LOL I didn't need your help and you never gave any either. I posted that thread just to start a convo but people like you are not worth conversing with.
You will be happy to know I spent all day today running tweaker apps for Windows and have now gutted Windows app store on Win8.1. No spyware apps on my PC.
I should change my user name to 'tweaknut'.
You will be happy to know I spent all day today running tweaker apps for Windows and have now gutted Windows app store on Win8.1. No spyware apps on my PC.
I should change my user name to 'tweaknut'.
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