16GB RAM - disable paging file?

Hi, I have 16GB 1333Mhz RAM in my laptop as well as a Intel 510 SSD 120GB. Does it make any sense to disable the paging file?

Thanks

 

i wouldn't disable the page file because eventhough you have tons of ram, windows will still write to it. It could lead to instability.

I would move the page file onto the samsung 640gb drive though

 

I actually wanted to disable it because of an performance increase. So moving it from the SSD to the HDD would be the worst solution I could think of in terms of performance?

 

I've done that i don't have any performance issues

You want fast? How about a ramdrive? have you tried that? You could use 4 gigs of your ram for a swap file...but if you are going to play with this, please back everything up first

RAMDisk - Software - Server Memory Products & Services - Dataram

 

I too have 16 GB and an SSD. I set a small pagefile on my HDD. I've never filled my RAM so I doubt it has ever been used.

 

I disabled page file,

you can go ahead and disable.

Even with the 4GB RAMdisk, my RAM usage never goes over 50%..

 

ditto, I have only 8gb, and I've never had any problems running without a pagefile. I don't do anything super intensive though so I barely after go past 15-25% of ram usage except when Im running VM.

I don't foresee any problems for you unless you have specific programs that won't run without a pagefile (for example, i'm no digital artist but I think older versions of PS required the existence of a pagefile).

 

I have 8 GB RAM and have had my pagefiling off since 2009

 

I keep a 1.5GB page file on my HDD simply because Dawn of War II whines about not having one, otherwise, it'd be long gone.

 

Yes, disable it.

I disabled mine at 4GB and now at 8GB.

There are two possible downsides:
1) If you have unrelated kernelpanicks they won't get written to the error log.
2) If you use a ridiculous amount of RAM you'll get an Out Of Memory warning and then shutdown.

I've never had an issue with either of those things.

 

with 4 GB RAM I defeniately need the paging file. Even with 8GB I would leave it enabled.. but I think with 16 GB there is plenty of RAM left even if I run Virtualbox twice

 

One more vote for disabling the page file. I have 3-4 virtual machines in VirtualBox constantly up and running (Oracle, MSSQL, Domain Controller) plus the development tools (IDE) on the host machine and everything is running pretty smooth.. usually it doesn't take more than 10GB in my case.

 

My vote, leave it enabled. Set range from 256MB to 2048MB in case it's needed. It won't hurt anything and will only reserve the smallest amount (in this example, 256MB) for swap file unless it's used. Put it on your hard drive or SSD, doesn't matter.

In any case, this question has been debated as much as religion and abortion. So do what you will, because you'll get a split vote til kingdom come!

 

In any case there will be zero difference in performance. If you feel you can disable it then you don't need the swap file, and it won't affect you. If you needed it then it wouldn't be a good idea to disable it.

 

I have 12 GB ram, and have a 500 mb page file just in case I have a program that needs a pag file. Have no issues, running great.

 

I say disable; unless you see issues....

 

Leave it (alone) on. You never know which apps gonna be needing that simple little pagefile that Windows makes available to them.

cheers ...

 

No, actually there can be significant performance improvements. This has already been shown time and time again.

There are three reasons to leave a page file on:
1) Some old application somehow still relies on it (never seen this ever)
2) You use an absolutely ridiculous amount of RAM. Even with video editing you'd probably be fine on 16GB.
3) You rely on error reports for BSOD's that probably never happen.

There can be performance gains without a page file. This much is fairly obvious and benchmarks will agree.

 

Basically, leave it off until the situation dictates that you need it on, which is very unlikely.

 

Proof? Links?

 

Under which circumstances? Ive always left it on and no issues our performance issues whatsoever. Show me benchmarks or better yet real world performance results, especially with virtual machines.

 

There's no such thing as a real world benchmark. The entire idea of a benchmark is to push the computer.

Someone else can show the TomsHardware benchmark where video rendering was considerably faster with 16GB and no page file when compared to 16GB and a page file.

Your RAM is a thousand times faster than your HDD. If you force applications to use RAM instead than you can potentially have a much faster experience. Of course a program might only page 5MB and therefor you'll only see the difference when accessing the 5MB of data but that's not really the point. There are blatant performance benefits.

 

By real world benchmark I was saying user experiences doing what the OP was talking about. The user was talking about virtual machines, not video rendering. I doubt you'll see any degradation unless you had like 2GB of RAM and everything was cached to the hard drive. In certain and extreme circumstances perhaps, but for other uses no. And I'd like to see that Tom's Hardware benchmark. 7 is very efficient at using RAM to ensure as little direct access to hard drive if the swap file is being used.

Also with virtual machines you will WANT pagefile enabled because you can error out even if you have enough RAM, or actually can reduce performance.

 

It depends on your applications and how much demand they put on Ram. If your running several applications-multitasking and these demand lots of ram,,there could be a problem,,would not be able to save your work, ect.If your applications exceed ram limits,,no way to clear ram for new space---which is what page filing does-clear ram to disk for new ram demands.This is just applications---Windows itself has to be added in and M$ required space for this and that,,,,ect. ,,If M$ comes up with a new formula for windows in ram--updates-platform or otherwise,,system my go kaput,,M$ assumes page file is active and includes this in there figuring.If you know exactly the ram demands of these programs you run and stay within ram limits,,then full speed ahead !

Heres a discussion on just what page filing does,,ect

windows server 2008 - Any benefit or detriment from removing a pagefile on an 8GB RAM machine? - Server Fault

Cheers
3Fees

 

Sorry, you're making my head hurt waffling like that. Either you have proof that no page file is faster, or you don't. Don't tell me BOTH!!!

 

Good explanation there 3Fees +1. Pagefile more or less places duplicate RAM information on the disk so that it doesn't need to write the RAM info to disk.

 

Oly, I'm not contradicting myself. You can see huge performance benefits in benchmarks but those are not going to translate the same way to real world.

I'll respond to 3fees later, I have to go.

 

Turn it off and if you notice any problems then turn it back on. problem solved.

 

@S.Prime- pretty much. If you ever run into the unlikely problem it's easy to turn it back on.

Definitely a fair point. Absolutely not always the case.

Windows has quite a few settings that are off by default purely because it needs to ensure compatibility over performance. They will ALWAYS hold compatibility (and security) higher than performance. If there is a chance that you will move beyond 16GB of RAM they'll put in a page file for every person by default.

That does not mean that there can't be situations that benefit from having no pagefile. It just means that it isn't the "universally safe choice" and therefor Windows won't include it by default.

Hell, they give you the option for a reason. Because at some point the User can know best. This isn't some registry tweak or CMD confusing BS it's a nice GUI that shows you very easily how to disable it.

Absolutely true.

Of course this necessitates that your running out of RAM. We're assuming that with 16GB you won't run into a situation like this.

Obviously if you do you can turn the pagefile back on.

Of course the guy is smart and notes what I've already said.

I agree 100% with him. 90% of the time you need a page file. I'd wager that more than 90% personal computers have less than 16GB of RAM.

tl;dr: The article cited agrees with waht I've been saying entirely.

I actually think that Microsoft has said that after 16GB of RAM you can safely delete the page file. Id on't have the source on that unfortunately so you can basically disregard that.

 

Microsoft recommends paging files to go on SSDs because the access patterns actually work awesome for SSDs. High read count, low write count. I would never choose an HDD over an SSD for a paging file if I have both available:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

As for disabling it, feel free. I personally keep mine at 128MB or so so that core dumps can be generated properly, but that's your call. It's still never touched.

 

The pagefile is for modifiable data, disabling it doesn't stop paging occurring with non-modifiable data, for instance most executables are non-modifiable. For that you have to take extra steps. Since non-modifiable data doesn't change, it can be evicted from RAM and read directly from it's location on disk when required again.

So when you modify that data in RAM the copy in the pagefile is wrong and needs to be updated resulting in further writes to the pagefile.

With heavy paging to disk using mechanical can sometimes result in a huge performance loss, even to the point of the computer becoming unresponsive. Using a SSD will improve things greatly although better still, try to have enough RAM so that you are not totally reliant on the paging to disk.

 

Windows 7 "predicts" frequently used data and basically caches it into RAM. When higher priority calls come in, it dumps the data from RAM so the higher priority stuff can use it. Otherwise it has to locate it and fetch it again if needed, but if its in pagefile it knows exactly where it is and can retrieve that much more quickly.

So many people freak out when they see Windows is using 80% of their RAM, when in reality that's a good thing. It's making use of the fastest resource. It does make it a bit hard to tell though how much RAM you really need though if you're a heavy multitasker or run some RAM heavy apps.

In any case I don't think there is any down side to leaving it enabled and setting a range of 256MB to 2048MB in the case it's needed.

 

That depends on your setup. Paging (not pagefile) size is typically 4kB and when you load an application you might find Windows reserves the memory but only loads what's on disk into RAM when you actually need it i.e. try to access a particular 4kB page, it's not all loaded straight into RAM at the start.

It will dump from RAM if there isn't enough of it. This is why you might see a program that was run once and terminated load up much quicker the second time around, because a lot of the pages are still in RAM from the last time it ran.

Much more quickly than what? Again, the pagefile contains modified data, if you start a new instance of the application you can not use the modified data as the application needs to start with initialized data not the changed bits from last time. The pagefile is for running applications use when there just isn't enough RAM support.

If you have enough RAM for your needs why not have everything stay in RAM where access is quickest without the need to waste time and space with unnecessary paging to disk. That is if you don't care for recording crash dumps.

 

TRUE analytical studies (not some anecdotal evidence) have shown there is NO significant (i.e. human measureable) performance increase by disabling the page file.

Gary

 

That's kind of what I was thinking.

 

I've had it both enabled and disabled with 3.5 GB of RAM; when it's enabled the pagefile is on a regular HDD. I haven't noticed any discernible difference in performance either way. The obvious downside is that bad things may happen if you run out of RAM without a pagefile. In my experience Windows usually warns you if things are approaching the limit, though - assuming you can see desktop notifications and aren't in a fullscreen app.

As for VMs, I've run them without a pagefile, in Snoracle Virtual Box. They just pause if they can't get the memory they want. Clear some RAM for them, unpause, and they keep right on chugging, same as if you'd paused for any other reason. Not recommended, of course, but disaster won't strike if you fire up three VMs forgetting they all three love to eat RAM.

tl;dr: You can disable it and it shouldn't cause adverse effects, but I don't expect you'll see noticeable benefits from doing so.

 

Please explain what a true analytical study is and link to one.

Thanks

P.S.
Understanding the Impact of RAM on Overall System Performance

Yes, somewhat outdated but it'll show you that depending on virtual memory will give a performance hit.

Not to mention the Tomshardware article that's been posted on this forum before showing blatant speed differences when video rendering without a page file.

Anyone who can somehow say "Sure, using your Hard Drive for RAM won't give a speedhit" is fooling themselves.

 

I don't think anyone in this thread even suggested actually using the swap file. If you read the OP the question is:

To which the answer seems pretty overwhelmingly to be: No, it doesn't make any sense to disable it because with that much RAM it ain't being used, except by a few legacy programs and or the Windows debuggers.

 

Actually it is being used. By default Windows will page and many programs will page as well, whether you have the RAM or not.

 

Why do you say that? I have my page file set to start at 64MB, but it can grow up to 2GB, and it stays right at 64MB. I would love to see a reference that can show this. Windows ALWAYS uses virtual memory, and applications constantly page, but that's not the same thing as writing to the paging file.

Pushing the Limits of Windows: Paged and Nonpaged Pool - Mark's Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

That's just knowledge based on some issues the pagefile had back in windows xp. Hungry Man loves to reiterate knowledge that might, in 2011, be outdated and wrong.

Just leave the page file on, it's there to save your <insertwhateveryoulike> when you need it, and NEVER EVER affects performance otherwise. and it stays tiny until you need it.

 

Delete the page file. If you don't max to 16gb and a specific program doesn't require it specially then you don't need it. It might just slow you down.

With added benefit of less use of the HDD disk.

Besides you can try. Use without. If you have problems return to it.
And give feedback here.

False. I still remember the only way for me to get HD video playing in my dual CPU celeron 433mhz was to put page file to nothing.

 

Seems to be discussing pagefile is an exercise in futility lol. Most people have already made there minds up and both sides are probably right.

It really comes down to what you are running on your system. Most people probably will not notice any difference but some do. For instance I have some hard disk and memory intensive software and with the pagefile enabled I get a 400% to 700% reduction in performance on W7 with that particular application. Now we all don't run all the exact same applications so YMMV and in most cases having the pagefile enabled is probably not going to hurt except for maybe taking up some disk space if you don't prune it. If you do disable it though be aware that might not be enough as paging can still take place with non-modifiable data.

What's my recommendation for the OP? I don't have one because I don't know if he is running anything that might benefit from having it disabled. IMO it's something he'll have to work out for himself.

 

Sorry guys, I hadn't realized that hard drives were faster than RAM in 2011.

Carry on.

 

Read here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...gb-ram-disable-paging-file-2.html#post8010683

In any case, this question has been debated as much as religion and abortion. So do what you will, because you'll get a split vote til kingdom come!

 

which doesn't matter as the pagefile never happens (Except when really needed) on data that needs to be read into hdds and slow you down.

learn what it is, and how it works. stop babbling about stuff you don't know yet.

 

Here's one guaranteed to hack off people on both sides of this fence:

Setup a ramdisk of considerable size and carve out a chunk of that for your pagefile...can't get any faster(wasteful?) that that now, can we??

 

ouch.

i guess it's humour. but i've read enough about people suggesting this for real.

 

Precisely.

Btw i have found amusing that for Vista and W7, Microsoft evangelists said it was great to have most RAM in use. While for W8 they sell it because it uses the least RAM...
I wonder what will be of pagefile...

 

It was, in fact, humor. =p

EDIT: Bullit, just as much RAM is "in use" in Win8. The OS itself requires less RAM/ the services won't use as much but the rest of the RAM is still being used for caching.

Anyone who thinks RAM should be used indiscriminately is silly.