# How much virtual memory with 2 GB RAM ?



## Super1 (Oct 23, 2009)

Hi

1 - How much virtual memory do i need for 2 GB RAM or i let the Windows decide ?

2 - Do i need virtual memory for 2 GB RAM ? ( i think i don't )

I have Windows 7 RTM 7600


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## slyfox2151 (Oct 23, 2009)

yes you do need it, people still use it with 8gb of ram.

2-4gb will work well. 

or else leave it as default(let windows decide)


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## Super1 (Oct 23, 2009)

slyfox2151 said:


> yes you do need it, people still use it with 8gb of ram.
> 
> 2-4gb will work well.
> 
> or else leave it as default(let windows decide)



But  I heard that anyone have 2 GB of Ram or more they don't need the virtual memory because it will slow down the pc .


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## slyfox2151 (Oct 23, 2009)

it will slow you down if you have it disabled. ignore what someone may have told you.



i have mine on )let windows decide), its currently set itself to 4-6GB and using 400mb idleing.


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## Laurijan (Oct 23, 2009)

Just let the settings be untouched.. changes can lead to problems with games.. at least in my case Fallout 3 crashed whenever i manually set the Page-File size


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## Super1 (Oct 23, 2009)

I'll Let the Windows decide


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## Tatty_One (Oct 23, 2009)

Some people got away with no pagefile with 2GB+ of Ram in XP, vista and 7 need more generally, some apps actually expect it and dont run/properly without it, I do always set mine manually but I have a partition just for the pagefile as that speeds it up slightly plus another tip is to set the intial and maximum size the same, that way the "virtual" memory is always reserved and immediatly available, it does not hurt to give it a try, say at perhaps 2048MB...... remember, Windows isnt always the greatest at managing itself and apps associated with it, thats why there are so many 3rd party substitutes like recovery software, defrag etc etc.


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## Mussels (Oct 23, 2009)

Super1 said:


> But  I heard that anyone have 2 GB of Ram or more they don't need the virtual memory because it will slow down the pc .



thats a myth/lie



stick with a 2GB page file, no matter how much ram you have. i've been doing it since i had 256MB of ram, and i'm doing it now with 8GB of ram - it works really well.


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## DJEscreet (Oct 23, 2009)

miltonhork said:


> Hi
> You could raise it pretty much as much as you wanted. More seriously, just leave it be and let the Windows handle it.
> Fiddling about with virtual memory is really only needed when tweaking hefty apps (a huge database for example) for performance. Tweaking virtual memory on a desktop computer is wasting valuable gaming time!



You hit the nail on the head with that one.......Checks Virtual mem settings.... gets back to H.A.W.X....


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## caleb (Oct 23, 2009)

Let windows decide.

That was important when we had 5GB HDDs. who gives a f if Windows takes 500MB more when you have 500GB free?

Changing this always leads to performance drop's as you dont always check every possible scenario of applications running. Dont forget Win7 uses some relational model for data and it might not be as simple as runnings Quake2 to check if its REALLY ok.


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## Mussels (Oct 24, 2009)

caleb said:


> Let windows decide.
> 
> That was important when we had 5GB HDDs. who gives a f if Windows takes 500MB more when you have 500GB free?
> 
> Changing this always leads to performance drop's as you dont always check every possible scenario of applications running. Dont forget Win7 uses some relational model for data and it might not be as simple as runnings Quake2 to check if its REALLY ok.



you made a bad assumption.

You forget that when windows changes it all the time, its fragmenting itself, and your HDD - and since you cant defrag a page file, its not something fixable.

if you delete it, reboot, defrag, and set a static sized page file, it will be one contiguous fragment thus eliminating a possible source of poor performance on the system.


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## TheLaughingMan (Oct 24, 2009)

My paging files are off right now.  I can't say performance went up or down as I have not noticed it.  All I can say it my risk of system halt due to low memory has gone up for sure.

I am going to create a 2 GB partition set the management to manual with 2 GB as min and max and see what happens.  I have a pretty good idea of how Paging Files work and it is give an take.  It can increase and decrease performance depending on the situation.  In general, the less RAM the more it helps.  At 4 GB and below I say let Windows do its thing.


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## Mussels (Oct 24, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> My paging files are off right now.  I can't say performance went up or down as I have not noticed it.  All I can say it my risk of system halt due to low memory has gone up for sure.
> 
> I am going to create a 2 GB partition set the management to manual with 2 GB as min and max and see what happens.



you dont need to bother with the partition, all that does is give you constant "no free space" warnings

if its set static it cant fragment anyway, so theres no advantage to the partition


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## Laurijan (Oct 24, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> My paging files are off right now.  I can't say performance went up or down as I have not noticed it.  All I can say it my risk of system halt due to low memory has gone up for sure.
> 
> I am going to create a 2 GB partition set the management to manual with 2 GB as min and max and see what happens.



That dedicated partition makes I/O times slower just let the Pagefile be on the OS partition


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## Mussels (Oct 24, 2009)

how on earth do partitions make IO times slower. please provide some evidence to this.


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## Laurijan (Oct 24, 2009)

Mussels said:


> how on earth do partitions make IO times slower. please provide some evidence to this.



Thats what i have read somewhere on TPU dunno know for sure though (will search for it).. isnt the HDD´s reading head jumping back and forth then more making IO times slower? (with a dedicated partition for pagefile)


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## Mussels (Oct 24, 2009)

Laurijan said:


> Thats what i have read somewhere on TPU dunno know for sure though (will search for it).. isnt the HDD´s reading head jumping back and forth then more making IO times slower? (with a dedicated partition for pagefile)



no more than it would anyway. its not like you're adding more distance for it to travel - its exactly the same as if you had a single partition.

all you're doing with a partition is making it so that data cant leave that one section of the HDD for another, you're not making any big changes to it


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## Laurijan (Oct 24, 2009)

This is what MS says about I/O times on page files:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654

*Page file input/output rates*
To avoid overloading the system or other disks with page input/output (I/O) activity, use the following guidelines when you set up the page file on your computer:

    * If the page I/O (real disk I/O) rate is more than 10 pages per second, we recommend that you do not put the page file where the I/O activity occurs on the system disk. When the page I/O rate is 10 pages per second or more, we recommend that you dedicate a separate hard disk for paging.
    * If the page I/O rate to a particular disk that is used for paging is more than 60 disk I/O operations per second, use more than one dedicated page hard disk to obtain better performance. To do this, use multiple non-striped disks for paging, or use raid 0 striped disks for paging. Dedicate approximately one I/O hard disk to paging for every 60 pages per second of I/O activity.

      For example, if a system is averaging 150 pages of I/O activity per second, use three individual hard disks, or a three-disk raid 0 stripe set for the page file.

      Note These estimates are for hard disks that run at 7200 revolutions per minute (rpm). If you use a hard disk that runs faster, the I/O rate a disk can handle for page I/O will increase.

      Note If peak performance is critical to your system, use peak I/O rates instead of average I/O rates for these calculations.


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## Mussels (Oct 24, 2009)

that has nothing to do with partitions. thats all about physical DRIVES.

if you ahve three partitions, trying to read and write to all three at the same time is dumb - its like doing three copies on the one partition, a bad idea.


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## AsRock (Oct 24, 2009)

Let windows do it as for fixed size ( regardless of what size) in some games have give me some issue's in the past.

Turning it off is good but some games \ apps require it like Titan Quest.


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## Mussels (Oct 24, 2009)

AsRock said:


> Let windows do it as for fixed size ( regardless of what size) in some games have give me some issue's in the past.
> 
> Turning it off is good but some games \ apps require it like Titan Quest.



i'd like to know what games have given you problems - i'm yet to meet one


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## Laurijan (Oct 24, 2009)

Mussels said:


> i'd like to know what games have given you problems - i'm yet to meet one



With Fallout 3 i got less crashes when letting the page file be untouched.. could be random though


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## Mussels (Oct 24, 2009)

Laurijan said:


> With Fallout 3 i got less crashes when letting the page file be untouched.. could be random though



fallout 3 crashes? mine had issues refusing to start once due to EAX emulation, but the game itself never crashed on me


at a guess i'd say random - i always think "its possible that this was the cause for my crash" or "most likely cause" - but you never assume  it always bites you in the ass sooner or later


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## Laurijan (Oct 24, 2009)

Mussels said:


> fallout 3 crashes? mine had issues refusing to start once due to EAX emulation, but the game itself never crashed on me
> 
> 
> at a guess i'd say random - i always think "its possible that this was the cause for my crash" or "most likely cause" - but you never assume  it always bites you in the ass sooner or later



That senario was back in the days when Fallout 3 was realease and with early patches... Fallout 3 was very likely to crash often back then in my case


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## vagxtr (Oct 28, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> My paging files are off right now.  I can't say performance went up or down as I have not noticed it.  All I can say it my risk of system halt due to low memory has gone up for sure.



As far as i look Win7 virtual page management has same options as WinXP and dont let you fully disable it? So i did best i could and keep it minimal 128-384MB and didn't see any slowdown

How could i turn it off? (so windoze never came up to use my hdd for swap anymore on next reboot)



Mussels said:


> you dont need to bother with the partition, all that does is give you constant "no free space" warnings



Yep it always nagging  and we cant mount partition as hidden, and if we mount it in some folder (best win can do) then we cant put swapfile on it .... stpdwin


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## troyrae360 (Oct 28, 2009)

If you must play with the page file, set it to run off a fast disk that is not being accessed by another program or OS, making a partition wont help!!, it needs to be a seperate drive that isn't used often eg, your music and movie drive, or somthing fast maybe a raptor or a SSD


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## TheLaughingMan (Oct 28, 2009)

vagxtr said:


> As far as i look Win7 virtual page management has same options as WinXP and dont let you fully disable it? So i did best i could and keep it minimal 128-384MB and didn't see any slowdown
> 
> How could i turn it off? (so windoze never came up to use my hdd for swap anymore on next reboot)



There should be three options in that Paging File menu.  Windows managed, personally managed, and No Paging Files.  Select No Paging Files then restart.

There will still be Paging Files.  Windows has some tasks that have to use Paging files for some reason, but they are really small and I think are only accessed during long periods of idle.


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## Zubasa (Oct 28, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> There should be three options in that Paging File menu.  Windows managed, personally managed, and No Paging Files.  Select No Paging Files then restart.
> 
> There will still be Paging Files.  Windows has some tasks that have to use Paging files for some reason, but they are really small and I think are only accessed during long periods of idle.


Pagefile is also used for Memory Dump during a BSOD.
On the other hand, there is really little benefit from disabling the pagefile.


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## adambrown81 (Oct 28, 2009)

I think for 2 GB ram you need 4 GB virtual memory .It work well.Thanking You .


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## caleb (Oct 28, 2009)

Mussels said:


> you made a bad assumption.
> 
> You forget that when windows changes it all the time, its fragmenting itself, and your HDD - and since you cant defrag a page file, its not something fixable.
> 
> if you delete it, reboot, defrag, and set a static sized page file, it will be one contiguous fragment thus eliminating a possible source of poor performance on the system.



Ive tested it multiple times on with games and having defined swap file will eventually decrease performance. Memory managment isnt a task you can compare to a defragmented .avi file on your HDD and I agree maybe it has SOME TINY impact on seek times but is not as much an issue as OS running out of swap file or having some other problem with reorganization of its resources because of insufficent space. I would even put this so called "optimalization" from Windows 95 times on the MYTH  BUSTER's shelf.


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## vagxtr (Nov 5, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> There should be three options in that Paging File menu.  Windows managed, personally managed, and No Paging Files.  Select No Paging Files then restart.
> 
> There will still be Paging Files.  Windows has some tasks that have to use Paging files for some reason, but they are really small and I think are only accessed during long periods of idle.



That's the persisting problem i'm talking about  i heavily use WinXP (cause i simply can't easily adapte to Vista/Win7 explorer that in file bar needs the click to the utter right corner to show slash style hierarchy instead drop down menus or hassling with selecting file by file and not to select all cause now rows extend full line instead on file name only ... digress but i would like the best w98/w2k kind of explorer) and in WinXP it simply nagging for its PageFile  and it virtually shadows that nagging Vista/7 so i rather manually select where Win will crap than that it actually decides for me. In WinXP when app uses 1.5GB he always start to paging no matter that the rest of memory is empty, and more memory i have installed in WinXP the kernel uses more for it's bloat! so with 3.5GB it uses almost 1GB while on 256MB it used 128MB?!

btw. Does anyone knows how to resurrect default shortcuts under Win7 Library if it's mistakenly deleted, w/o full reinstall


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## JrRacinFan (Nov 5, 2009)

I have been playing around with this alot. Currently have it set for 1GB on my 500GB drive I use for media purposes.


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## Anusha (Nov 7, 2009)

slyfox2151 said:


> it will slow you down if you have it disabled. ignore what someone may have told you.
> 
> 
> 
> i have mine on )let windows decide), its currently set itself to 4-6GB and using 400mb idleing.



No it doesn't. Pagefile slows down my PC like crazy!!! I always keep it disabled. 

Why you really need a pagefile is for two things.
1. Some programs NEED it, as in specifically ASKS for it.
2. Defrag RAM to remove small unusable blocks of RAM, and make bigger contiguous space for new apps.

With a pagefile you waste RAM because you unnecessarily keep stuff in the pagefile = not best performance

Without a pagefile you waste RAM because you make small *holes* in address space that cannot be used by anything. Space is there, but they are scattered around. = can't get the full utilization

Choose what's best for you.

But keep a pagefile if u don't have 4GB RAM. 

FYI, in the past 2 years, I have crashed Windows only once because of not having a pagefile. That was when playing Crysis with Very High quality mode, in Vista x64 with 4GB RAM.


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## TheLaughingMan (Nov 7, 2009)

vagxtr said:


> That's the persisting problem i'm talking about  i heavily use WinXP (cause i simply can't easily adapte to Vista/Win7 explorer that in file bar needs the click to the utter right corner to show slash style hierarchy instead drop down menus or hassling with selecting file by file and not to select all cause now rows extend full line instead on file name only ... digress but i would like the best w98/w2k kind of explorer) and in WinXP it simply nagging for its PageFile  and it virtually shadows that nagging Vista/7 so i rather manually select where Win will crap than that it actually decides for me. In WinXP when app uses 1.5GB he always start to paging no matter that the rest of memory is empty, and more memory i have installed in WinXP the kernel uses more for it's bloat! so with 3.5GB it uses almost 1GB while on 256MB it used 128MB?!
> 
> btw. Does anyone knows how to resurrect default shortcuts under Win7 Library if it's mistakenly deleted, w/o full reinstall



I like the new Exployer in Win7 because it is more flexiable and moving to frequently used locations is a lot easier.  I am not sure about the first comment, but the second you may want to try the other view such as "small icons" or "detail" instead of the "list" you are currently using.  I hate it too.

And the default icons.  Which icons are you talking about?  If you are talking about Computer, Recycle Bin, etc.  Then first be sure you have your desktop icons on.  Right click, check menu for "Show Desktop icons".  Second.  Right click on desktop and click on Personalize.  In the personalization  you should find the options about which icons the desktop has like recycle bin, your documents, etc.


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## vagxtr (Nov 10, 2009)

TheLaughingMan said:


> I like the new Exployer in Win7 because it is more flexiable and moving to frequently used locations is a lot easier.  I am not sure about the first comment, but the second you may want to try the other view such as "small icons" or "detail" instead of the "list" you are currently using.  I hate it too.



Yep it's more flexible but some plain mouse actions are become more complex. I'm using details, list is something i always disliked and it's virtually harder to find things that way if you dont use keyboard.



> And the default icons.  Which icons are you talking about?  If you are talking about Computer, Recycle Bin, etc.  Then first be sure you have your desktop icons on.  Right click, check menu for "Show Desktop icons".  Second.  Right click on desktop and click on Personalize.  In the personalization  you should find the options about which icons the desktop has like recycle bin, your documents, etc.



No i'm taking about Vista/Win7 library default icons, for MyComputer there's still place on desktop and then wherever you want but i accidentally delete Documents shortcut in libraries and there's no way i cant bring it back as library item.


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