What is a good pagefile size for 32 gb RAM?

[etegv]

Hey, guys

Hoping to look for a direct answer. I turned on bf2042 and got 100% disk usage.

What should I set my min and max pagefile to with 32gb RAM? I currently have one 640gb hard drive

thanks

 

[pendragon1]

just let windows handle it and make sure its on an ssd or it wont help.

 

[learners permit]

Quick google check says launch game initially with steam closed. Worth a try anyway to alleviate high disk usage.

 

[LukeTbk]

With 32 gig of ram I do not imagine a game would often need large amount of swap, since WIndows 7 letting windows fully do is thing seem hard to beat, would you have an almost full OS drive or an hard drive for the OS and a fast SSD elsewhere maybe there is a case to make, but I do not imagine that it is close to be your case.

 

[bigdogchris]

If you really want to change your page file, the only change I think is safe is just changing your minimal value.

So say your system recommends a page file of 2,900 MB. It's OK to set the static minimal to 16MB and the maximum to 2900MB. That way the PF can always grow as large as it normally wants, but starts off small. If you set something like this the pagefile will reset to the smallest value on reboot.

The pagefile should be on an SSD. This kind of tweak is good when you don't have a lot of capacity on your SSD, but still safe for the system.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Get an ssd like this for $30: https://www.newegg.com/team-group-512gb-cx2/p/N82E16820331560

and stop worrying...

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Auto.

EDIT: Like others have stated, do yourself a favor and have your main drive be an SSD of some kind. Preferably Gen3 NVME or above. As long as it's using a good controller and has DRAM you should be set. Sabrent is a good inexpensive option.
But if all you have is SATA, that will still be lightning fast to any mechanical hard drive. There are tons of cheap SATA SSD's from Crucial etc, that would be a drastic improvement.

Then set your page file to auto. I hate Windows, but it manages a page file better than you. Not trying to be an a-hole, just facts.

 

[Axman]

Hey, guys

Any time you start telling Windows how to handle memory or page files, you're going to decrease performance unless you know *exactly* what you're doing, and have tested various configurations against each other.

Realistically, only people running servers or dedicated workstations can even see a benefit from taking it off auto.

 

[Luke M]

Windows doesn't over-commit so unless you have a page file you can never use 100% of your memory.

On Linux, you can go into paging death (madly swapping code pages) even if you don't have a page file...it will basically crash before "out of memory". So a page file is recommended there too.

 

[daglesj]

For a long time I gave up on using pagefiles as I was running 16-32GB of ram. So I would just set a 200MB-200MB set pagefile on a SSD and leave it at that. I would have one cos some older stuff likes to know one exists.

Then I started playing Fallout4 a few years back and it would throw up a Pagefile too small error. That was the only software that had an issue in years. So I just set it to automatic on the SSD and that was that. It does seem however, that MS has put a lot more into cacheing and ram etc. over the years with Windows 8 onwards certainly. I think years ago from the 90's to Windows 7 it was a case of "we need to dump what's in RAM to disk cos we ain't got enough" but it's got a lot more sophisticated.

 

[MrGuvernment]

For a long time I gave up on using pagefiles as I was running 16-32GB of ram. So I would just set a 200MB-200MB set pagefile on a SSD and leave it at that. I would have one cos some older stuff likes to know one exists.

Then I started playing Fallout4 a few years back and it would throw up a Pagefile too small error. That was the only software that had an issue in years. So I just set it to automatic on the SSD and that was that. It does seem however, that MS has put a lot more into cacheing and ram etc. over the years with Windows 8 onwards certainly. I think years ago from the 90's to Windows 7 it was a case of "we need to dump what's in RAM to disk cos we ain't got enough" but it's got a lot more sophisticated.

And this is why it is best to just let windows manage it. Some poorly written games and apps still look for a page file and want it a certain size.

 

[etegv]

Get an ssd like this for $30: https://www.newegg.com/team-group-512gb-cx2/p/N82E16820331560

and stop worrying...

yea, I know. I have some SSDs but I needed to use the 640gb because they stopped working

And for some reason I am having bad luck with SSDs. I bought one years ago that works fine. I bought a 240gb SSD after that one that has my OS and is giving me that Automatic Start Up Error. My 3rd SSD with OS stopped showing up in BIOS (need to test it again, decided to boot up with the 640gb SSD). My first one was Corsair, so I think they make quality SSDs.

Ok, thank you guys for the info. Page file only for SSD.
I fixed the problem with BF by moving it to SSD.

 

[gvx64]

I disabled page file on my new 32GB system because I read that doing so can extend the life of the NVME by eliminating unnecessary write operations. I figured that 32GB RAM was big enough that paging really wasn't needed. I have been running some RAM heavy applications (Cemu) without any issues so far.

That said, judging from the responses on this thread I likely didn't make the right decision here. Are there reasons why you wouldn't recommend the OP disable page file with 32GB RAM?

 

[Furious_Styles]

I disabled page file on my new 32GB system because I read that doing so can extend the life of the NVME by eliminating unnecessary write operations. I figured that 32GB RAM was big enough that paging really wasn't needed. I have been running some RAM heavy applications (Cemu) without any issues so far.

That said, judging from the responses on this thread I likely didn't make the right decision here. Are there reasons why you wouldn't recommend the OP disable page file with 32GB RAM?

Disabling the page file was a thing back with Win XP. I used to do that for a while but even had to give up at some point because some stuff just would not work without it. Plus the gains weren't really substantial and they would be even less so today.

I highly doubt you need to worry about the lifespan of your nvme drive.

 

[daglesj]

Yeah just set it to Windows managed. If you are that worried set it to 2048min to 4096max and forget about it. Windows doesnt just use the pagefile like it did 20 years ago. Its a bit more sophisticated now. There was a period (and I read a couple of MS papers on it) that MS essentially just kept it for legacy and for crashdump operation around the Windows 7 era. But things have changed, there is all sorts going on in the background, on the fly data cacheing and compression etc. etc.

If you are worried about wear on a SSD (I wouldnt worry about that, you'll be swapping it out in a few years anyway) just buy a cheap 120GB SATA SSD (an old MLC Intel say) for $12 on Ebay and put the pagefile on that. Or if you have a M.2 slot spare slap in a $20 16GB Optane and put it on that for the super low latency.

 

[DanNeely]

Disabling the page file was a thing back with Win XP. I used to do that for a while but even had to give up at some point because some stuff just would not work without it. Plus the gains weren't really substantial and they would be even less so today.

I highly doubt you need to worry about the lifespan of your nvme drive.

For a few days 8 or 9 years ago I was using a win7 system with a disabled page file and not quite enough ram. The results were hellish, my coworkers and I didn't know the systems were configured that way, and initially assumed the random crashing of our applications was due to some other configuration problem. For the few days it took to figure out what the problem was and to convince our admin that whatever site he read that was pushing no swap was wrong our productivity was probably half normal. Once they were turned back on everything was fine again. Using 9GB of memory on an 8GB system's not that bad when spread across multiple applications some of which are slow, bloated, and waste lots of memory loading stuff we don't actually need, and even the mild slowdown from going a bit over is still far better than having software randomly terminate.

From past experience with underprovisioned work computers, when multi-tasking less than 25% over is barely noticeable even with spinning rust, 50% is annoying, and 100% was unusable. I assume SSDs would push the pain point farther out, but my personal systems and those provided by my new employer have enough ram that it's almost never a problem.

 

[TeleFragger]

years ago.. windows 9x, I used to set the pagefile... put it on a physically 2nd drive (D and set it to min/max 2.5x amount of ram... I remember googling.. wait Altavista searching and they said that way you should never fill it.. bit of a waste but it is good as drives are cheap..

so put on SSD or NVMe drive and set to 2.5x for min/max.. poof done

 

[DanNeely]

years ago.. windows 9x, I used to set the pagefile... put it on a physically 2nd drive (D and set it to min/max 2.5x amount of ram... I remember googling.. wait Altavista searching and they said that way you should never fill it.. bit of a waste but it is good as drives are cheap..

so put on SSD or NVMe drive and set to 2.5x for min/max.. poof done

Back in the win 9x day when normal PCs had to swap as a matter of course, 2.5x wasn't an unreasonable size. Today unless you've either got a bottom spec race to the bottom system, something a decade old, or are doing something exceptionally memory intensive you'll never need anywhere near that much swap; and with larger memory sizes and smaller SSDs the combination ends up wasting a ton of space.

You should be sizing your system to have enough RAM that you don't need to swap at all in normal use. 100% of ram size on low end machines (being a tab junky on 4gb will overflow ram), 50% on high end is plenty now. If you're going regularly over you should buy more ram to fix it.

But let it be able to grow if you do something that causes it to be needed. If you run out of ram+swap things start crashing because they run out of memory. While a fragmented page file will be slower even on an SSD (why I still recommend setting a non-trivial size), it's a much lesser evil. And if you do find yourself in a situation where you are using more than the current minimum size, you can shrink it (lower min and max) and then expand (increase the min above what your usage was) it after a reboot before starting other applications to defragment it.