Virtual Memory Settings

[Westford Computer Service]

I have read many posts, articles etc... that say many different methods of setting the Virtual Memory. Microsoft says to set the min. at 1.5 times the ram installed and 3x that for the max. What do yo set yours at and is there a correct method ?

 

[Mr.Mike]

I have read many posts, articles etc... that say many different methods of setting the Virtual Memory. Microsoft says to set the min. at 1.5 times the ram installed and 3x that for the max. What do yo set yours at and is there a correct method ?

My understanding is if you set things up that way, you take the best advantage of what memory you have available.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I'm a firm believer in putting it to "system managed".

Back in the Win9X days...Windows was crummy and memory management, and setting a max and min size kept those slow hard drives from working so hard constantly resizing it as much.

Windows NT is much better at managing memory and the pagefile.

My performance trick for both my gaming computers..and on servers...put a pagefile on every spindle you have...and let the system manage its size. Having them on separate drives allows far superior concurrent usage.

 

[16k_zx81]

I have read many posts, articles etc... that say many different methods of setting the Virtual Memory. Microsoft says to set the min. at 1.5 times the ram installed and 3x that for the max. What do yo set yours at and is there a correct method ?

Best option I have found is to use those settings but use a different disk to the one the main OS and programs are installed on, and, if possible, split the paging file across two non-os disks. This makes a noticeable difference. The only caveat is that it requires at least 2-3 physical hard disks to be installed on the machine!

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

On XP I set min/max to double the RAM.

On Vista/7 I just leave it alone.

 

[MobileTechie]

I don't fully understand the 1.5x RAM thing because surely the more RAM you have the LESS virtual memory you're likely to need. If you've 16GB of RAM on Windows 7 you most likely don't need any virtual memory, yet alone 24GB of it?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I don't fully understand the 1.5x RAM thing because surely the more RAM you have the LESS virtual memory you're likely to need. If you've 16GB of RAM on Windows 7 you most likely don't need any virtual memory, yet alone 24GB of it?

Agreed....I think it's just an old way of doing things from years ago....for some reason..still being followed. I remember back in the NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5 days...being told to follow that 1.5x rule closely. But back then we did servers with 128 megs of RAM...256 megs....512 was getting huge and luxurious...and a gig of RAM was super rare.

Usually don't need virtual memory much anymore...but if you disable it...some programs will squawk...as they need it regardless of how much RAM you have.

 

[andcorptech]

For those that want to get into the technical details to understand virtual memory , this is an excellent post by Mark Russonovich

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

A great but very detailed read.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

For those that want to get into the technical details to understand virtual memory , this is an excellent post by Mark Russonovich

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

A great but very detailed read.

I cracked up over one of the replies to that blog....
"but what do i do with the pagefile on a 64 bit server 2003 system with 32gb ram, with a memory-intensive application? ... let's call the apllication ... exchange 2k7 "

 

[mraikes]

I follow the 1.5 & 3 rule on XP machines. It seems the lower the specs of the machine the more it helps performance.

"System Managed" for Vista and newer.

 

[RegEdit]

What do yo set yours at and is there a correct method ?

You get your lipstick and your eyeliner and you match the colors.