"GT" <ContactGT_remove_@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:45b0a26d$0$21010$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com...
> "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:51akphF1jso5sU1@mid.individual.net...
>> kony <spam@spam.com> wrote
>>> Alex Mizrahi <udodenko@users.sourceforge.net> wrote
>>
>>>>> 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),
>>
>>>> it might be true if i run a single application cosuming gigabytes of
>>>> RAM,
>>>> but usage patterns on modern desktop computers are not like that.
>>
>>> Wrong. Usage patterns do not change it and multiple apps
>>> merely have additive memory load which is still weighed
>>> against what the physical memory can support, or can't.
>>
>>> If there is enough physical memory, enabling a pagefile
>>> will ALWAYS, no matter what other variable, be slower.
>>
>> Wrong with an OS that has enough of a clue to not use it
>> unless its necessary because there isnt enough physical memory.
>
> True, but windows does not fall in the category you describe - it
> automatically loads itself into RAM, then swaps out parts to the swap file
> without question.
>
>> And even with one that isnt smart enough to always do that,
>> you havent established that what minimal use of the pagefile
>> it does do when there is enough physical memory does slow
>> things down any anyway, most obviously when what minimal
>> use it does make of the page file is in the background etc.
>
> In the control panel you can set the minimum and maximum size for the
> swapfile. These settings do indicate to windows the smallest amount to use
> if the RAM is not full, it simply says the minimum size that the file will
> be. This avoids the swapfile becoming fragmented across the disk. Before
> setting the virtual memory size, I would recommend turning off virtual
> memory completely, rebooting, defragmenting the hard disk, then setting
> the minimum and maximum values to the same amount, so that the swapfile is
> configured in one large contiguous block on the disk and will never grow
> and shrink and therefore cannot become defragmented. Of course, this is my
> advice to someone with less RAM than the applications they use can ever
> need. If you have enough RAM - turn it off and things will be faster,
> quieter and more responsive.

OOPS - I missed a word out above. Second sentence should read - "These
settings do NOT indicate to windows..."