Hey everyone.
Today I've just started upgrading the RAM on the computers at work. Basically we're bumping it up to 2 GB. Now that's easy enough of a job for me, but what I'm more concerned with is the size of the pagefile/virtual memory.
What do you guys (and gals?) think I should set it to? We are running XP Pro SP3.
I was thinking something along the lines of 256 to 384 MB with 512 MB for the upper limit. However, my boss said we should have it at 1.5 times the amount of RAM installed, which comes out to 3 GB. According to him, that's what the Microsoft recommendation was. I think he's right about that because if I let XP do a "system managed size" for the pagefile, it comes out to ~3GB as well.
But isn't 3 GB too much? At least as far as I know, virtual memory is much slower than the physical memory because it's limited to the read/write speed of the hard drive, isn't that correct? If so, wouldn't it make sense to keep the pagefile fairly small if there was enough physical memory? It always seems to me that the bigger the pagefile is, the more XP forces programs to use it.
Last year or so, I've used this same logic to set the pagefile on my computers at home and after dramatically shrinking their pagefiles, they seem to have been running much faster ever since. One thing I definitely noticed with the system managed pagefile is that if a large program is minimized and not used for a few hours, it would always take a lot of time for it to come up (and the hard drive would read/write a lot, too). After reducing the pagefile, this effect seems almost non-existent.
My theory on this is that when a program isn't used for a certain amount of time, Windows XP puts parts of it in the virtual memory to free up physical memory.
I've already tried this experiment on all 4 of my computers, and all 4 yielded the same results. Currently, two of them have 512 MB of DDR RAM, and 256 MB pagefile. Originally they had the same amount of RAM, but ~760 MB for the pagefile. The other two computers have 384 MB SDRAM, and 160 MB pagefiles (before they both had ~500 MB pagefiles).
The computers at work will have 2 GB of RAM, like mentioned earlier. Most use about 200 - 400 MB of memory when sitting idle after a fresh boot.
...
Now I've already had the discussion about this with my boss. He's actually a very reasonable person and said that we should set the pagefile to whatever I think will make the computers work faster. So all in all, I just want to check whether or not I'm on the right track with this. Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions?
Thanks everyone.
Today I've just started upgrading the RAM on the computers at work. Basically we're bumping it up to 2 GB. Now that's easy enough of a job for me, but what I'm more concerned with is the size of the pagefile/virtual memory.
What do you guys (and gals?) think I should set it to? We are running XP Pro SP3.
I was thinking something along the lines of 256 to 384 MB with 512 MB for the upper limit. However, my boss said we should have it at 1.5 times the amount of RAM installed, which comes out to 3 GB. According to him, that's what the Microsoft recommendation was. I think he's right about that because if I let XP do a "system managed size" for the pagefile, it comes out to ~3GB as well.
But isn't 3 GB too much? At least as far as I know, virtual memory is much slower than the physical memory because it's limited to the read/write speed of the hard drive, isn't that correct? If so, wouldn't it make sense to keep the pagefile fairly small if there was enough physical memory? It always seems to me that the bigger the pagefile is, the more XP forces programs to use it.
Last year or so, I've used this same logic to set the pagefile on my computers at home and after dramatically shrinking their pagefiles, they seem to have been running much faster ever since. One thing I definitely noticed with the system managed pagefile is that if a large program is minimized and not used for a few hours, it would always take a lot of time for it to come up (and the hard drive would read/write a lot, too). After reducing the pagefile, this effect seems almost non-existent.
My theory on this is that when a program isn't used for a certain amount of time, Windows XP puts parts of it in the virtual memory to free up physical memory.
I've already tried this experiment on all 4 of my computers, and all 4 yielded the same results. Currently, two of them have 512 MB of DDR RAM, and 256 MB pagefile. Originally they had the same amount of RAM, but ~760 MB for the pagefile. The other two computers have 384 MB SDRAM, and 160 MB pagefiles (before they both had ~500 MB pagefiles).
The computers at work will have 2 GB of RAM, like mentioned earlier. Most use about 200 - 400 MB of memory when sitting idle after a fresh boot.
...
Now I've already had the discussion about this with my boss. He's actually a very reasonable person and said that we should set the pagefile to whatever I think will make the computers work faster. So all in all, I just want to check whether or not I'm on the right track with this. Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions?
Thanks everyone.
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