Virtual memory with large RAM

xkm1948 · May 15, 2016

I just noticed today that after installing 128GB RAM Windows 10 decide to shovel 129GB of my SSD storage for virtual memory. I turned it down to 1GB as I feel I won't be running out of RAM any time soon.

For you guys with 32GB or 64GB or 128GB RAM what size do you set?

Jetster · May 15, 2016

Virtual memory is your physical memory combined with the page file. I leave the page file alone unless its larger then 4 Gb then I change it. But keep in mind you still need a page file for memory dumps. But 1 Gb is fine

AsRock · May 15, 2016

My systems only have 12GB, 16GB and this one with 16GB but with windows 10 and is only 2.5GB on auto. Been no reason to touch it.

If you are using programs that could use the 128GB then you need to set what you think the absolute max you think you would need.

Trial and error.

Kursah · May 15, 2016

AsRock said:
My systems only have 12GB, 16GB and this one with 16GB but with windows 10 and is only 2.5GB on auto. Been no reason to touch it.

If you are using programs that could use the 128GB then you need to set what you think the absolute max you think you would need.

Trial and error.

+1, I'm on 16GB on my Win 10 Pro system and it's allocated 2432MB on auto. I've seen no reason to touch it.

My home-grade server has 24GB, running Server 2012 R2 Datacenter and has 3584MB utilized on Auto...again leaving it alone.

+1 to what @AsRock stated, trial and error. Windows has done a pretty damn good job in my experience handling the size of the paging file, but I've yet to deploy/use a system with that much RAM. I don't fully utilize what I have in most cases even with VM's running.

Maybe there's a bug in Windows with that much RAM?

Frick · May 15, 2016

AsRock said:
My systems only have 12GB, 16GB and this one with 16GB but with windows 10 and is only 2.5GB on auto. Been no reason to touch it.

Same here.

Jetster · May 15, 2016

I think its important to point out that is you use a program like Samsung Magician it can and will change your page file settings. Not a big deal unless you have limited space

Aquinus · May 15, 2016

Unless you plan on running out of memory, I would disable it. Windows 10 through 7 will use physical memory as "swap space" when the page file is disabled and when there is an application requires swap space which simply keeps anything from getting swapped out so, the only thing that disabling it should do is prevent you from using more memory that you have. I do this with my machine with 16GB because I never run out but, I would disable it for 16GB or more. On the scale of 64 or 128GB, a 1GB swap file won't do you swat if you run out of memory so, you might as well disable it.

Side note: Ever since I built my current PC, I've never used swap space and have never encountered a problem from disabling it.

P4-630 · May 15, 2016

Having 16GB and it's using 2432mb on auto, I just leave it as is.

Jetster · May 15, 2016

I have run into problems when it is disabled. Running adobe apps I have run out of memory with 16Gb. If you reach your memory limit or have a crash you system will lock up. And you'll also come across applications that simply won't run properly if the pagefile is disabled. For instance, you really won't want to run a virtual machine on a box with no pagefile, and some defrag utilities will also fail. I doesn't hurt anything to leave it but take up a little space.

Aquinus · May 15, 2016

Jetster said:
And you'll also come across applications that simply won't run properly if the pagefile is disabled.

I'm calling BS on that one. When was the last time you actually encountered this problem, under what OS and, what application? This isn't Windows XP here. Modern Windows creates swap space in physical memory when there is no page file on the disk. That's why even though you disable the page file, there is still data that resides in it. However, if you look closer, that paged memory is consuming physical memory (basically, a page file is made in a ram disk internally.)

Jetster said:
Running adobe apps I have run out of memory with 16Gb.

I would rather know that I'm running out of memory instead of tanking performance and with @xkm1948 having 128GB of memory, I think he would rather know when he's running out of memory instead of killing performance by hitting swap space. Also, for overflow to be important you need to have enough overflow to be worth while, so if the OP is running out of 128GB of memory, he'll probably need a whole lot more than 1GB of swap space, which is going to be very, very slow.

So I would argue that unless he knows that he's going to be using swap space or some weird legacy application that "requires" it to exist, I would disable it.

Jack1n · May 15, 2016

The only thing i did was move it to my outer rim partition of my HDD.

trog100 · May 16, 2016

xkm1948 said:
I just noticed today that after installing 128GB RAM Windows 10 decide to shovel 129GB of my SSD storage for virtual memory. I turned it down to 1GB as I feel I won't be running out of RAM any time soon.

For you guys with 32GB or 64GB or 128GB RAM what size do you set?

i turn mine off.. the more real ram you have the more pretend ram windows thinks you need..

now for the discussion about why windows needs its virtual memory.. he he..

the bottom line is if you are in position where windows does need to use its pretend ram you need to buy some more real ram.. or your machine will run like shit..

back in the day.. windows was designed around the principle that no machine had enough real ram.. hence the swap file.. oddly enough now ram is cheap and some folks have loads.. 128 gigs for example windows still follows the same principle.. it thinks no machine has enough and can waste a huge chuck of drive space setting aside a huge swap file that will never be used.. he he

trog

Frick · May 16, 2016

Hey now mine was set to 16GB for some reason. I just set it to 1GB.

Ferrum Master · May 16, 2016

Funny, M$ implements memory compression to win10 to save more RAM...

No virtual memory breaks down many things. Windows kernel is constructed to rely on it. The swap size should be equal to your usual occupied space while browsing etc activities with the PC. ~ 3-4GB should be fine.

Frick · May 16, 2016

Ferrum Master said:
Funny, M$ implements memory compression to win10 to save more RAM...

No virtual memory breaks down many things. Windows kernel is constructed to rely on it. The swap size should be equal to your usual occupied space while browsing etc activities with the PC. ~ 3-4GB should be fine.

Seeing how many people run with it disabled (when having lots of RAM) this is evidentily not true. Me I have it on, just in case I use a strange ancient program that for some reason does something with it.

RejZoR · May 16, 2016

I have it turned off with 32GB of RAM. Had the same setup (disabled paging) when I was using 18 GB of RAM on X58.

Ferrum Master · May 16, 2016

Frick said:
Seeing how many people run with it disabled (when having lots of RAM) this is evidentily not true. Me I have it on, just in case I use a strange ancient program that for some reason does something with it.

The most popular thing that randomly crashed without page file was... Skyrim...

jboydgolfer · May 16, 2016

mine set itself to 16000+ Mb's as well. i just set it to 2000Mb's for max, and Min, and never look @ it again.

Ahhzz · May 16, 2016

xkm1948 said:
I just noticed today that after installing 128GB RAM Windows 10 decide to shovel 129GB of my SSD storage for virtual memory. I turned it down to 1GB as I feel I won't be running out of RAM any time soon.

For you guys with 32GB or 64GB or 128GB RAM what size do you set?

I'm at 32 physical, and 50 virt. seems to run fine

trog100 · May 16, 2016

my own swap file size.. zero.. i always run this way and always make sure my machine dosnt need windows pretend ram.. i do it just to save C drive space no other reason.. i like a small easy to back up and restore operating system drive.. with loads of basic programs on my C drive is 30 gig used out 128 gig..

i truth i have more ram space (32 gig) than my entire operating system drive uses

trog

Aquinus · May 16, 2016

Ferrum Master said:
No virtual memory breaks down many things. Windows kernel is constructed to rely on it.

Wrong. I think you need to read my first post again:

Aquinus said:
Modern Windows creates swap space in physical memory when there is no page file on the disk. That's why even though you disable the page file, there is still data that resides in it. However, if you look closer, that paged memory is consuming physical memory (basically, a page file is made in a ram disk internally.)

Unless you're going to be running of physical memory, then there is no reason to keep it on. Personally, I would rather know that I'm out of memory as opposed to running like crap because I don't have enough.

Ferrum Master said:
The most popular thing that randomly crashed without page file was... Skyrim...

I also don't ever recall Skyrim crashing on me in eyefinity without a page file so, I'm assuming that you were actually running out of memory.

Ferrum Master · May 16, 2016

Aquinus said:
I'm assuming that you were actually running out of memory.

Not used ram, but allocated one. Virtual pool is reserved in between programs, it doesn't say it is usually filled. That's why there are crashes when they conflict and virtual pool without the swap file is not enough. The more greedy programs you use, the more pool is needed.

trog100 · May 16, 2016

i have run without a swap file for the past 10 years or so.. mostly on a win XP 32 bit 4 gigs of ram machine.. no problems.. and it was originally a high end gaming machine when it was first built.. i used the same machine up until last year..

this shit all dates back twenty years or more.. ram was measured in mega not giga sizes and windows really did need it.. the stuff used to cost a fortune..

the message that crops up when you try and disable the swap file also hasnt changed for twenty years.. nether has windows assumption that any machine has enough of the real stuff..

if i never needed a swap file with 4 gigs of ram i for sure dont need one with 32 gigs.. windows is set up to have "virtual memory" limited only by the size of a hard drive.. windows uses the real ram first but if that isnt enough it "swaps" out to a hard drive.. the snag being pretend hard drive memory will turn any machine into a slow unusable piece of crap.. i doubt many folks on here have used a machine running on a swap file.. if they had they would know the downside.. he he

back in the day it all made sense.. now with cheap as chips ram it dosnt.. its just a waste of hard drive space.. the more real ram you have the more hard drive space gets wasted.. it hits home the worse when have a small fast ssd drive for the operating system and plenty of ram.. ether way given enough real ram it can be turned off..

enough ram for most purposes is probably 8 gigs.. my laptop only has 4 gigs and it never swap files.. i could turn that off but leave it on.. with only 4 gigs of ram windows dosnt waste much hard drive (ssd) space..

trog

xkm1948 · Jun 4, 2016

Had my first crash since coming up to 128GB today. I turned off page file, assuming I would never run out RAM. During my work the genome assembler took a spike up to 122GB RAM usage and before I realized it showed me the blue screen, I lost about 500GB of work in progress. So lesson learned. No matter how big your RAM is, DO NOT TURN OFF the page file! :mad:

Solaris17 · Jun 4, 2016

I run 32GB and this time on auto it makes my rig reserve 4.8GB, though honestly iv usually manually made it 4GB for YEARS, and I even ran without one for awhile.

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Virtual memory with large RAM

xkm1948

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Frick

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