Disable Virtual Memory with 2 GB of RAM

Is this a smart move? Or should I just leave virtual memory on? I just ordered 2 GB of RAM and was wondering if this would be a smart or stupid move.

 

Windows will normally allocate most, if not all of the memory to the RAM. So if your not using any virtual memory at the moment, then disabling it, won't result in any increase in performance.

 

I would keep 1gb of page file. Some applications and games require a page file. Unless you really need that 1gb I would just keep it.

 

You can't. Virtual memory is always on. You can disable the pagefile, which only has one effect. It means Windows will be able to allocate extra memory should it be needed.

In other words, you'll lose stability, in return for.... nothing. (Well, you'll save a little bit of harddisk space, but that's it. Performance-wise, you won't gain anything)

I don't know why everyone assumes Windows (or any OS) is as intelligent as a 6 day old concussed and braindead duckling. It's just not true.

They're not stupid at Microsoft. They are fully aware that as long as there is available RAM, that is the best place to allocate memory. The pagefile is only used when there isn't enough RAM for everything.

 

Other way around, but I know what you mean.

Lol.

Usually, this is true. As mentioned above, some apps and games will use the pagefile even if you have plenty of RAM free. I tried to lower the size of the pagefile some time ago and got a ton of memory addressing problems in games such as BF2 and HL2.

 

I would leave virtual memory enabled.

 

my take - if u have 768MB ram and above, just leave it enabled and let windows handle it

cheers ...

 

****. I knew someone was going to get all detailed. So much for trying to keep it general.

Well, here goes. It's not up to the individual apps to decide whether or not to use the pagefile. They use virtual memory, only. And Windows will decide alone and unchallenged, where to allocate each chunk of virtual memory. The games aren't even aware that some of their data is on a pagefile. They know it's in virtual memory, and they can address it like any other piece of memory. Windows maintains that illusion for them. And that also means that when a game ends up using some of the pagefile, it's Windows that makes that decision, not the game.

Windows will try to put stuff in the pagefile, even when there's still some RAM free, yes. That's actually pretty clever, because it's probably safe to assume that more memory will be required later. Sooner or later, the game is going to come and say "Oh, can I have 50MB more, please?". And if the RAM is 100% full, that's a problem. Sure, it can be handled (Take 50MB of least-used data, write it to the pagefile, which should "only" take a few seconds, then allocate the freed RAM to the game. That only means the game will freeze for, say, 2 seconds). But a much better strategy is, when the RAM is close to filling up, to gradually trickle some data to the pagefile when it's clear that it's hardly ever used, so that we keep *some* RAM free to satisfy the immediate requests for more memory.

But no, games do not ever require a pagefile. They may require "lots of memory", which translates into a big pagefile, but ultimately, the game doesn't care, and isn't even aware of, how much of its virtual memory is on a pagefile.