Disable virtual memory?

I was wondering how much ram you would need to disable virtual memory, and will it give a significant performanceboost?

Regards

 

Best to let the OS determind the amount of VM ... due to the differnce between the 2 ... The OS will naturally only use VM when necessary ... when it comes to RAM, the more the better ... Most boards only Support 2GB ... althought XP does have the ability to support 4GB. I believe the benefits/gains of more RAM, begin to fade (better but the rate of gain per MB begins to reduce) after a GB.

Steve

 

Hi Don,

It could be a trial or error issue, but if you have 756 or 1024, maybe even 512 it could be that you won't need vm at all. It sure depends on what you are doing with your PC. In my case (512 Mb) VM is never used.
That said reminds me that I don't really understand terms as: resource hogs, big footprints, RAM consumers etc. Maybe one of the forum members (guests) can make this a bit clear to me. At the moment I am running Ewido, Spy Sweeper, CA Ino etc., all real time.


Just my (not proven) opinion.

Gerard

 

Thank you, Steve and Gerard. The only reason i asked was because a colleague insisted that this would benefit the performance of my computer (i have 1gb ram BTW), and this one of the "few" area's where i am not "up to speed".

Regards

 

Don,

Some good advice here from BlackViper; http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm
I have run my 1GB Ram laptop for 6 months with no swapfile with no problems as yet.

But I am not a Gamer!

 

I'd be interested to see what happens with you system if you set the pagefile size to the minimum 2 mb, Gerard.

I'm surprised I haven't tried it, however, still humbled by my recent SP2 fiasco, I am not about to try it.

IMHO leaving the default setting for you would work fine. i like to have the minum and maximum size equal because i hope it causes less files to be fragmented.

I think the larger issues are if you can move the page file to another (second internal) hard drive you system will be much faster...If it is not already being used as a scratch disk, and if it sufficiently large. I don't understand how XP decides to use it, but when it needs it, it needs it fast!

I wish there were an easy way to check the performance differences.

-HandsOff

Oops, just read black viper that was linked to...sort of embarrassing. i have used his page for services suggestions, but have never read the rest....keep meaning to...I guess his ideas are much like mine except the part about small page file. Does NOT work for me. probably because use a lot of graphics. often temp install files will be set up on the system drive and large pagefile on the otherone helps (or reverse, just not on the same physical drive. I havent finished reading BV yet...just got to the start of the benchmarks and realized how funny my post is now...here come the flames!)

-HandsOff

 

Thank you, Blackcat. I'm going to try it and see if it gives me anything.

 

...and yet BV even admits that bench mark testing did not show a performance benefit. I think part of the reason BV is able to get away with it is that (as we all know) he has disabled every service with a vengence, and no doubt has nothing going on but his bench mark program. Well, i think it would be interesting to see what would happen if say, he tried running 10 or 20 extra processes and compared. I seldom have less than ten programs running at a time...


- HandsOff