Page file or virtual memory plays a vital part in determining our system performance. At least 5 years new operating system will come out with larger memory requirement. A good example is Microsoft Windows Vista operating system . It needs at least 512mb ram to run properly without the cool 3D effects.
Unfortunately, RAM prices did not decrease as fast as RAM requirement had increased. This meant that Windows users had to either fork out a fortune for more RAM or run only simple programs. Neither were attractive options. An alternative method was needed to alleviate this problem.
The solution is the operating systems nowadays came up with was to use some space on the hard disk as extra RAM. Although the hard disk is much slower than RAM, it is also much cheaper and users always have a lot more hard disk space than RAM. So, Windows was designed to create this pseudo-RAM or in Microsoft’s terms – Virtual Memory, to make up for the shortfall in RAM when running memory-intensive program.
Now, in this guide, I will tell you how to optimize your page files or virtual memory. It’s very easy and you might wanted to do this to avoid performance-related problem such as the blue screen of death.
Right click on My Computer icon and click “Properties”.
Go to the “Advanced” tab.
Choose Performance and click “settings”.
Go to the “Advanced tab”
Change the setting for virtual memory
The best setting is the virtual memory size should be 1.5 times of your memory size (according to the Microsoft knowledge base)
Set the initial size and the maximum size equally the same. (Both are 1.5 times the amount of your system memory.
Choose the partition with less file access if can. Setting the page files on another drive other than a drive which has Windows files is much recommended.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:40 am
BAD IDEA
Setting the lower value for the pagefile at 1.5 times the size of physical memory is not necessarily optimum. If memory is short this may be too low, if you have 2GB or more it may be excessive. But as a general rule it isn’t too far off.
But setting the upper limit the same as this – that is a really bad idea. This is most certainly NOT what Microsoft recommends. Doing so may result in out of memory errors or severe performance degradation.
Microsoft recommends that the upper limit be much higher than the lower value, allowing the pagefile to grow when needs are high. The default settings will provide for this. If the lower value is adequate for normal needs this will NOT produce pagefile fragmentation. If the lower value is exceeded the page file will be restored to this value at next reboot (or sooner).
Best recommendations.
If you are an experienced user you may wish to experiment with other values for the lower value. Do not go lower than the size of physical memory. The upper limit should be at least double this value.
An inexperienced user should leave the settings on default. Many very experienced users do this as well. Only change the default settings if you are thoroughly familiar with the implications. You need far more informaton than is contained in this article or my comments.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
If you have 2Gb+ of RAM (WinXP maximm is 3Gb) then you can usually disable Vitual memory alltogether and see a noteable performance increase.
I have been running without a pagefile for over a year and have only had a very few “out of memory” errors, usually from very memory hungry applications like Video Encoders.
However, Setting the pagefile to a fixed size can give a performance increase over the Automatic resize option. This will also cause your pagefile to be less prone to fragmentation.
The 1.5 x System RAM rule is a good rule of thumb but I wouldn’t advise going above 4Gb as Windows is not to clever when it comes to mapping larger ammounts of memory.
June 19th, 2009 at 8:53 am
I did not make this clear in my previous comment.
The pagefile is NOT virtual memory. You can disable the pagefle but this will NOT disable virtual memory. Virtual memory is an integral part of the OS and can never be disabled.
Virtual memory is a system that virtualizes all access to memory. Applications never access physical memory directly but only via the memory management hardware of the processor. This provides a virtual environment to applications that is independent of the size of RAM.
The pagefile was designed to optimize the use of RAM. It does this by temporarily storing rarely used data, thus making RAM available for more important purposes. This improves performance.
Regarding pagefile configuration:
In the large majority of cases the default configuration will be optimum, or as close as to make no difference. Unless you have a very good reason to change it, leave it alone. To make intelligent changes you will need far more information than is in this article.
For the most part the comments by Martin do not correspond with reality and should be ingored.
Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA