More about Paging File and why you should not disable it

Discussion in 'Operating Systems' started by X7007, Apr 5, 2017.

  1. X7007

    X7007 Ancient Guru

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  2. slickric21

    slickric21 Guest

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    Well I've been in the no page file club for many many years now, however recently more and more games have been reliant on having a pretty decent sized page file otherwise I get out of memory errors and game crashes.
    Forza Horizon 3 & Watch Dogs 2 are the most recent examples that spring to mind.

    Hence I'm now back running a page file after 10 years, albeit a modest 4gb one
     
  3. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    Tried no PF a while ago, only difference I noticed was now I had issues with certain games and programs, no noticeable performance increase, so I leave it enabled
     
  4. KissSh0t

    KissSh0t Ancient Guru

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    I just make an 8GB pagefile on a separate harddrive.. Everything works fine..

    *shrugs*
     

  5. lucidus

    lucidus Ancient Guru

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    Mine's set to 200-2048MB on my SSD. 99% of the time it's never used and stays at 200MB so I don't care about it at all. My browser cache is bigger! I used to have it on a separate hard drive long ago when I didn't have an SSD though. It kept the read/write loads lighter on the primary drive.
     
  6. KissSh0t

    KissSh0t Ancient Guru

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    I still put browser cache on a separate drive to cut down on writes to the ssd... :X
     
  7. OrionCheung

    OrionCheung Guest

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    I use my old 55GB SSD SATA II. Set it on 54GB as page file. /shrug
     
  8. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    Windows 10 manages this better than previous versions as the default system managed size is low and then increases only when required.
     
  9. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    eh I leave enabled at 1gb never had issue with games saying out memory, never really saw difference in anything other then crysis loaded faster with it off then on for me, on my old pc.

    Pretty much leave it on for BSOD reports
     
  10. X7007

    X7007 Ancient Guru

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    I've somehow managed to find article about paging file and SuperFetch ! we now know what this thing do exactly !

    This is what happens when you enabled SuperFetch
    You can check yours using PowerShell in administrator

    PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-MMAgent


    ApplicationLaunchPrefetching : True
    ApplicationPreLaunch : True
    MaxOperationAPIFiles : 256
    MemoryCompression : True
    OperationAPI : True
    PageCombining : True
    PSComputerName :


    This is what happens when you disable it

    PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-MMAgent


    ApplicationLaunchPrefetching : False
    ApplicationPreLaunch : False
    MaxOperationAPIFiles : 256
    MemoryCompression : False
    OperationAPI : False
    PageCombining : False
    PSComputerName :



    Now this explains exactly when it does

    https://aloiskraus.w ordp ress.com/
    https://aloiskraus.w ordp ress.com/2016/10/09/how-buffered-io-can-ruin-performance/

    Interesting reading !

    That's why maybe samsung recommend to disable it, because of Rapid Mode cause it uses the memory already instead of superfetch in better way.
     

  11. mbk1969

    mbk1969 Ancient Guru

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    ^ To me this article is a lot of assumptions and guessworks.
     
  12. X7007

    X7007 Ancient Guru

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    Did anyone check their PageFile usage when you enter a game ?

    For me Heroes of The Storm says PageFile 7049 MB just on the menu. so it's cleary using some page file before and after you enter a game of more than just 3000 MB or 2000 MB

    can anyone check it with MSI Afterburner ? many other games have high page file and it's different every time. I gave mine 10000 MB page file on the C:\ and and all on my other partition 10000 just to check it for now.
     
  13. velho

    velho Member

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    I've been running without pagefile for over 10 years and never have had any problems.
     
  14. chumanga1

    chumanga1 Member Guru

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    For out of memory notification case, there is a limit of memory usage which system will complain about out of memory if system is running without PF. I have 16GB RAM installed and when i keep PF off and reach around 14GB memory usage then the notification will appear. Same happens at 8GB which i think is around 6GB when it will run out of memory notification.

    You always need to have some free memory room to stay with PF off to avoid such problem. If your applications always come close to the total physical RAM then it's best to keep PF on to avoid bad notifications.

    Pagefile dont cause major performance impact if you dont use too much memory. If my memory usage stay low like 50%(8GB) pagefile almost not being touched, system only start to use it often when your physical RAM usage is high.

    Right now i have 7.5GB RAM usage and PF is storing only 42MB, while PF peak usage was 115MB. Virtual memory is 9GB.

    People create misundertood about Pagefile vs Virtual Memory(commit charge) which are different things and works differently. They look at their virtual memory usage which is always higher and imagine their pagefile is being in heavy load, which is false.

    For example MSI afterburner dont show Pagefile usage, it shows virtual memory(commit charge) but unfortunately people imagine their pagefile is going too big.
     
  15. Dch48

    Dch48 Guest

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    I had to increase my page file to 12 GB to stop memory issues in Forza 3:Horizon. I just set it now to let Windows manage the size. I was running at 4gb before that, You should never have less than a 512mb size page file. Even if all you do is browse and send email.
     

  16. Dch48

    Dch48 Guest

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    Virtual memory is the size of your page file + the physical RAM. At least that's how it's reported in HwInfo.
     
  17. akbaar

    akbaar Master Guru

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  18. KissSh0t

    KissSh0t Ancient Guru

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    I tried 512mb initial and 4096mb maximum and ran out of memory while playing Space Engineers.

    *shrugs*

    Put it back to 8GB and all is good.
     
  19. chumanga1

    chumanga1 Member Guru

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    Yes, my point is than afterburner report virtual memory in fact but give wrong name to it of "pagefile", which make users without knowledge to misinterpret the value and would they think their pagefile(disk usage) is being used that big, but is not.
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
  20. styckx

    styckx Ancient Guru

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    No page file was always a badge of honor more than a proven performance advantage. So this really doesn't surprise me.
     

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