Windows 8.1 x64 Update 1 - is it OK to run it without any pagefile with 16Gb of RAM?

Discussion in 'Windows 8' started by MonarchX, Apr 29, 2014.

  1. Gfnn

    Gfnn MDL Novice

    Nov 4, 2012
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    Unless your SSD is very small, putting the pagefile on an hard disk is meaningless. Should the memory be filled, thrashing will occur and you will loose any advantage provided by the SSD, as you will rely on the hard disk for swapping memory pages.
    Leaving the pagefile on the SSD might wear it a bit faster, but, in my opinion, the speed gain is worth the risk. In addition, if you have many GB of RAM, it is unlikely that the pagefile will be used at all (unless you use some specific software).

    h**p://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx
     
  2. my2cents

    my2cents Guest

    Hi Gfnn,

    I agree with much of your logic! The article is a nice reference as well. I would also have no issues leaving my pagefile on an SSD "unless" it was constantly being accessed due to a lack of hardware resources (eg, not enough RAM for the PCs intended use). Can you possibly identify a specific software that requires a pagefile? I'm only asking that question because you chose to use that as a "default" caution (I assume). Anyway, thanks for the article!

    my2cents
     
  3. Gfnn

    Gfnn MDL Novice

    Nov 4, 2012
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    I've been told that some Adobe software makes extensive use of pagefile (if available) even if you have tons of RAM, however don't take that for sure because I never tested the thing in person.
     
  4. Superfly

    Superfly MDL Expert

    Jan 12, 2010
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    From a developers point of view, it's impossible to differentiate the allocation of memory - it will depend on the OS what is real and what is virtual - programs like Adobe/AutoCAD require vast amount of memory. thus pagefile allocation will be more necessary using those programs - the amount will depend on the available physical memory, I assume.
     
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  5. Gfnn

    Gfnn MDL Novice

    Nov 4, 2012
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    Yes, you are right. That was just something a friend, who works as graphics designer, told me.
    I think the real reason is that he manipulates uncompressed images of many GB, so he always ends up swapping memory even if his pc has a lot of RAM... :rolleyes:
     
  6. my2cents

    my2cents Guest

    Thanks to both of you. Now, I am not a professional graphics designer; however, I do have a need to manipulate uncompressed images as large as 1.7GBs at times. These large images come from a professional graphics studio and are delivered to me (on disc) for webiste presentation. I just use Gimp to shrink em' and post em'. I have 8GBs of RAM installed and never even come close to using 25% of my RAM at any given time.
     
  7. Superfly

    Superfly MDL Expert

    Jan 12, 2010
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    Cool.. the point I was making was that we can allocate and dispose RAM ( Constructor / Destructor) but have no control of where it lives at runtime...

    BTW GIMP rocks...:biggrin:
     
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  8. Amplificator

    Amplificator MDL Junior Member

    May 16, 2012
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    #48 Amplificator, May 25, 2014
    Last edited: May 25, 2014
    I find it staggering that people still don't know how such a basic feature as the page file or swap file/partition works after all these years :)

    In short: Keep it enabled, let Windows manage its size and keep it on your SSD drive.

    Will you need it at some point? Maybe, maybe not. That's actually one of the main reasons behind it in the first place.

    A page file/swap file will be used when it is needed and in rare cases to store state data. It will, in basic terms, "extend your ram" by dumping what cannot fit in your actual ram onto your drive instead. Like temporary ram.

    The less ram you have the higher the chance you will have for the page file to be used.

    If you only have 2GB of ram but are running a program that is using 3GB of ram; without your page file you would get a message from Windows saying that your system is simply out of memory.. and then expect something to crash because there is no ram to do anything.

    When you have a page file, that 1GB of data that can't fit in your ram will get paged/swapped to your drive. This will of course be a lot slower because ram is way faster than any drive so the data needs to get written to and read from your drive all the time. This is also why having your page file on an SSD is much much better than having it on an old HDD, because when you actually need to use the page file it will not be mind-boggling slow like with an HDD.

    When you have enough ram you should in theory be able to turn off your page file. But in reality it is used for a bunch of small tasks and in the past some applications simply wouldn't work without it. This has gotten a lot better now, but for serious work it is still preffered to have a page file for obvious reasons. This tends to be "professional" applications where stability is key. And having an application crash in the middle of a task is obviously not ideal, so having the application use the page file can be considered a safety feature.

    Except for a few small tasks the page file will not be overly written to, so most of the time, like the swap file in linux, it's empty or close to it. The size is simply reserved for when it needs it, and Windows should be set to automatically manage its size. If you set your page file to a limited size and both your ram and page file is used up, things start to become unstable again. But having Windows manage the size will ensure that there is always a space when needed.

    The page file is not something that is constantly being written to, then emptied and written to again just for fun. Therefore there should not be any wear on an SSD drive worth talking about.
    Simply by using your SSD with daily activities will wear on an SSD way more than the page file ever will..

    So bottom line: Keep the page file enabled and let Windows manage its size and keep it on an SSD. The only people that should turn it off is the people that know how it works, why its there and what the pros and cons are.

    You have a good bunch of features in Windows that are incredibly helpful, like SuperFetch etc.
    Often you see people complain/ask why Windows is using so much ram all the time while they are not doing anything. People think that using less ram makes it more efficient, right? But you have all this ram in your computer, so why not use it by having SuperFetch cache files that you are most likely to be using, thus having faster load times etc.?
    And in case you need all the ram in your system for an actual task you are doing yourself, SuperFetch will dump its cache as needed and make the ram available to use as you need it.

    Most of these features you should leave on unless you know exactly how they work :)