Turning off the Pagefile: My results (running thread)

Sovereign · Post by **Sovereign** » Fri May 05, 2006 10:01 pm

So since I have 2GB RAM (and will never have less ever again!) I decided to turn off the pagefile completely in the System control panel. So I rebooted, and the UI loaded faster. Usually after I log on, I have to wait 10-20 seconds before the UI loads properly. By "properly" I mean that I can use the system. I get this stupid thing where the taskbar is missing temporarily (showing a slice of the logon screen) showing only the sections between where the Start button and beginning of the taskbar should be and the section between the system tray and taskbar. Not after turning pagefile off. Now keep in mind I turned off and rebooted. I don't know what this is going to do with a cold boot.

The idea came from HardForum and their pagefile tweak guide. I opened Doom3 and ran it for a while. Then, I quit Doom and ran every single app that I could think of that I could possibly, reasonably have open at the same time: 3ds max 8SP3, Photoshop CS2, Rhino 3D 3.0SR4, Word 2003, Excel 2003, Outlook 2003, Firefox with 10 tabs, iTunes, antivirus, F@H, Trillian, Xfire, Logitech SetPoint drivers and Yahoo! Widget Engine w/ four widgets loaded. Peak usage (as reported by Task Manager) was about 1054MB. Therefore, according to the tweak guide, I could safely disable the pagefile because 1054*1.25 < 2GB (the 1.25 was to account for extra headroom if I opened something else)

Immortal · Post by **Immortal** » Sat May 06, 2006 5:35 am

Good to know... so youre saying that no page-file = good if you got 2GB ram or over?

I should think that some more tests would be beneficial.. are there any programs that dont run without pagefile, independant of how much RAM you have?

KnightRid · Post by **KnightRid** » Sat May 06, 2006 6:22 am

hmmm..I have 2gb of ram and I tried this before, and had HUGE problems. I had so many things taht would not run it wasnt even funny. Now it could be that i am just an idiot ( 72% in favor of ) or maybe i had something set wrong/programs running in the background/virus/trojan/wierd other things taht used memory ( 28% here )

I might have to give it a shot again, but if I remember correctly Winamp gave me alot of problems and......I think Ulead Video Studio.

Mike

I will be curious as to how this holds up over the long haul!!

Sovereign · Post by **Sovereign** » Sat May 06, 2006 8:18 am

Now, we also get to see later this month how 2GB + No Pagefile works on 2GB DDR500 w/ an overclocked Opteron...but for now everything runs. Doom3? No prob. Photoshop? Piece of cake. Will do more "stuff" later for ya...

Dragon_Cooler · Post by **Dragon_Cooler** » Sat May 06, 2006 10:00 am

os it wont work for pc3200??

Sovereign · Post by **Sovereign** » Sat May 06, 2006 10:48 am

It works, I'm just wanting to see if PC4000/DDR500 makes it faster. And I was wrong about the UI loading thing. From cold boot, that was the same. But application response is quicker now...

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Sat May 06, 2006 1:27 pm

infinitevalence wrote:ok... im going to get to the real core of the problem... YOU NEED A PAGE FILE!! While some people think (yes this did include me at one time) that removing your pagefile will speed up your computer it actualy slows it down. Just because you have enough memory that does not mean you dont need to page things. Because of the way programs run the will genneraly run in the same memory space for a period of time and then branch to another memory space. If you had to load the whole program into memory not just the sections most likly to be used then your computer would only beable to run one program at a time (you would also have to toss the OS and leave just the kernal to ensure correct opperation) The Pagefile holds backups and memory locations for programs that have been swaped out of main memory for exicuting your primary program, these will at some time need to be swaped back in (you know little things like your network driver so you can play BF2 online) It also holds memory locations for the rest of the program your running. For example Eve-Online will generaly have a memory footprint of 200MB in main memory and between 500-900MB of paged memory. I dont want all of that 900 loaded in because then i would not have enough room for all my other processes and applications that are required to run windows.

So... if its still there its because its required and MS in its infinite wisdom has let you uncheck the box and seeing a need (ie some program needed to be paged) ignored your request because it would drasticly reduce performance.

// rant over

copied from another thread but still relivent.

pointreyes · Post by **pointreyes** » Sat May 06, 2006 3:31 pm

infinitevalence wrote:copied from another thread but still relivent.

Thank you. You're quoted response was one of several I have seen over the years with the Windows pagefile. I have been too busy to locate one of those quotes but glad to see you found your very own quote.

Plus I thought I read somewhere that some programs will ignore the lack of a pagefile and create their own.

Sovereign · Post by **Sovereign** » Sat May 06, 2006 7:11 pm

I found that disabling the pagefile is not helping, perhaps even slowing some things down! So back on, 256MB pagefile...

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Sun May 07, 2006 1:26 am

really its a good idea to have a 1.5x page file. IE 1GB of mem == 1.5GB page file.

Zelig · Post by **Zelig** » Sun May 07, 2006 6:39 am

For years, I messed around with the page file. Now I just let Windows manage it, there's no noticeable improvement with any configurations I set.