Page file needed when PC has 2 - 4 GB Physical RAM

[Stooo]

I want the opinion of fellow tweakers as far as whether or not to use a pagefile when a machine has between 2 and 4 GB of RAM on Windows XP Pro.
We are deploying new machines and have a guy who swears we should have it set to 3067 on every machine! Granted back in the days when memory was expensive and PCs had only 512 it may of been wise but come on is it really needed? Our users go to MySpace and mostly use applications like office. Just want to get an idea of what other people use because it seems more and more this guy is bogus and his credentials are false!

[zman88]

Check this out , Move Page File to a different disk

[INVALiD]

Some programs require a pagefile, like certain games. If you find that something is amiss you can put the pagefile back.

IMHO I would recomend keeping a page file in some form or another.
A page file is a good thing.

[ephekt]

I wouldn't matter if your PC had 32GB of RAM, some apps are written to require a page file. Also, if for some reason you ever reach your full RAM capacity your computer will crash without a page file, and you will lose any unsaved data.

Just want to get an idea of what other people use because it seems more and more this guy is bogus and his credentials are false!

Well, just based on the fact that you presumably want to disable the page file on business PCs, and this guy is (sensibly) tell you not to, I'd say your view is a bit skewed.

But to answer your question... It is generally suggested that the pagefile be 1.5x the size of the physical RAM, and absolutely no less than the same size of physical RAM.

[Stooo]

My view is not skewed. Everything that has come out of this person is suspect. I truly havent been playing with the hardware end too much as I've been working on bigger things. Just for giggles I will load Catia and Solidworks with a pagefile set at 2MB. I'm running 4gigs and could care less about a dump file or stop error (thats why I use windows)

[ephekt]

Originally Posted by Stooo

My view is not skewed. Everything that has come out of this person is suspect. I truly havent been playing with the hardware end too much as I've been working on bigger things. Just for giggles I will load Catia and Solidworks with a pagefile set at 2MB. I'm running 4gigs and could care less about a dump file or stop error (thats why I use windows)

Well, he is at least making a sensible statement in this case.

If all your apps work without a page file then disabling it could work, but it's certainly not recommended by MS or really anyone else worth listening to. I view it like OCing enterprise PCs; sure, it may work and grant a slight performance gain, but the risk of things breaking down the line far outweighs the slight gain your users will get (and likely not care about). With 4GB there's really no reason to disable the page file anyway...

Perhaps you should read this. It is "just a blog" but it has some solid info.

[Fleabus]

See this page:

Virtual Memory Primer
Virtual Memory in Windows XP

Happy trailz,

[k0NG0]

You should let the OS take care of the page file and just forget about it. It will be a mammoth task to prove any sort of performance increase with page file disabled or set to a certain size. "It should be faster" doesn't make it so.

Generally, a programmer has no control at all over whether a memory page in the virtual memory they can allocate from will stay in physical memory or whether it will be paged out to disk. You get a slice of virtual memory that you use, the rest is handled by the OS. That's the brilliance of it all. Screwing around with that isn't recommended.

[XJ.]

At 4Gig, I don't use a page file, otherwise I just set my page file to 1.5x my physical ram - unless I've had some monster app that needed more.

[INVALiD]

Mark Rosinovich (probably the best person who could provide a credible response) wrote a decent article on this some time ago about page files usage and windows memory management.

I think TweakHound had a link to it on his site.

[S.SubZero]

People seem very fixated on the pagefile thing. I'm not sure what they are trying to gain from disabling it. If the system doesn't need it, it should not be accessing it, no? If the system IS accessing it.. maybe it needs a pagefile.

If one is 100% certain they have more RAM then they could ever possibly use, just set the pagefile to a gig. That way if a rogue app suddenly wants a pagefile, it will have one.

[XJ.]

Originally Posted by S.SubZero

People seem very fixated on the pagefile thing. I'm not sure what they are trying to gain from disabling it. If the system doesn't need it, it should not be accessing it, no? If the system IS accessing it.. maybe it needs a pagefile.

Well, Windows (From NT on) has used complicated paging system the result of which is that Windows is almost always paging, even when you have plenty of free memory. Other operating systems like Linux or MacOS X use a simpler and yet smarter system that doesn't page when there is free memory. The only thing that I KNOW I gain from turning off the XP page file is that my HD is not being accessed all the time just because...