Virtual Memory - minimum/maximum

[BenJMF]

Is there any drawback in setting the virtual memory min. and max. to 4096? I've always been told that the min. should be 1.5 and the max 3.5 times your physical memory. Am I setting myself up for trouble by doing this?

 

[BadFrog]

How much memory do you have installed? What OS are you running. XP does a good job of managing virtual memory on its own so I let it do so. No need that I can see to change that.

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy"
Albert Einstein

 

[trollacious]

Sounds like what they taught in an old UNIX class. # I use a single number for virtual memory, have been for years. If you NEED 4G of virtual memory and have the hard drive space to spare, then set the initial size and maximum size to the same number. That will keep Windows from expanding and contracting the paging file and could make things a bit faster in virtual memory.

Lee

 

[BenJMF]

I'm using XP Pro with 1GB RAM on laptop and 2GB on desktop. I read somewhere that if you make the min and max the same value, XP never has to allocate more virtual memory so it cuts down on the possiblity of lag.

I was just curious b/c the IT guy at a company I once worked for would give me friction every time I increased my virtual memory.

 

[linney]

RAM, Virtual Memory, PageFile and all that stuff.

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm

http://www.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555223&SD=tech

 

[cdogg]

Ben,

If you leave the setting to automatic, Windows will set the min to 1.5 times the amount, and the max to 2.5 times.

I would leave it at the default. Setting the min and max to the same amount doesn't really help all that much, and some might argue it doesn't make a difference at all and just takes up more space than it will probably ever need. The best option if you care about your swap file is to setup a partition on a different hard drive. Place the swap file here. Growing and shrinking won't matter since it has the partition to itself.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[Frank4d]

I just leave it at the default which is 1.5X physical RAM installed. If I look in Properties for pagefile.sys it shows the last access was eight days ago (so it isn't used much anyway on some systems).