On Thu, 18 Jan 2007 21:48:13 +0200, "Alex Mizrahi"
<udodenko@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:

>(message (Hello 'GT)
>(you :wrote :on '(Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:37:39 -0000))
>(
>
> G> I have 1.5GB RAM and I have my page file turned off. This makes things
> G> run faster as everything loaded is in RAM and never swapped out to hard
> G> disk.
>
>this is not really true..
>there are pages in memory that are loaded from EXE and DLL files, windows in
>some cases can forget about them -- replace those pages by file cache, for
>example, and they will be read back later.
>if you're using file system very intensively, you can still see some page
>faults (and delays) of applications loading back..
>you can see this in task manager, if you enabled 'page faults' column, does
>it say 0 for all columns?
>page file is for pages that are allocated in memory and not backed by some
>file. actually, i think there are pages that are allocated, but never used,
>so some small amount of paging files can speedup things -- there will be
>more place for caches..

No, pages allocated but never used will not matter, a small
amount of paging does NOT speedup anything. The system
either has enough (real) memory that it doesn't have to page
out (which is ALWAYS faster "IF" the use allows, if it
doesn't require too much memory), or it doesn't have enough
memory, in which case you may have faults, errors, but we
can ignore the error conditions with the simple concept of
"don't configure a system such that it has them".



>i have 2 GB of RAM and have some small page files. i believe it's more
>optimal, but i can't be sure..

If the total amount of allocated memory is beyond 2GB, yes
it is more optimal. If the total amount is below 2GB, it
may depend on how much of a benefit you would see from
having a larger filecache (IF you adjust Windows memory
management to have one, this is not a default installation
condition), it is quite possible the larger filecache
reduces rereads from HDD, more than the I/O to HDD from
slight pagefile use. In the end, the goal is still the
same- based on the specific uses of the system, to minimize
access to the HDD.


>
> G> Beware, though if you use memory intensive applications and the RAM
> G> becomes full, either the application or Windows will crash.
>
>it's very unlinkely for windows to crash. memory allocation just fails, and
>actually application can handle this gracefully.
>btw there's one more reason to keep page file size at minimum -- some
>applications erroneosly allocate tons of RAM, and with large pagefile
>swapping make system non-responsible. with less or no pagefile, those
>application will simply honestly report failure..

If you're going to have a pagefile active, it should be
large enough to handle the entire memory allocation from
applications. Allocated memory that isn't used is not
going to be so much of an undue burden on the system, but I
suppose it does depend on exactly what the app is trying to
do, if it is excessively buggy then the solution is to
replace the app.