Optimum Paging File Size?

[Rennn]

Given that I have 8gb of ram and a 1tb hard drive, what would be my ideal paging file size? It's at 8gb at the moment. Edited January 18, 2013 by Rennn

[Vagrant0]

That's really a matter of debate. I don't think any particular value is decidedly "best" or "optimal" without taking other factors, like OS, Processor, HD type and speed, Speed of RAM, and type of work generally done.

 

The general rule of thumb I've been using has always been 2x installed RAM, but that was when I only had 4gb RAM installed. I've since upgraded to 16gb RAM, but kept my pagefile at 8gb, without noticing any problems. But then again, I havn't actually gotten around to running anything that really needed to use up all my RAM like I was frequently having at 4GB.

 

You should however not have any pagefile allocated to a SSD since this can shorten the life of the SSD since pagefile data, just like RAM, is essentially fragmented data just by its nature.

 

You should probably be fine at 8gb, unless you're running something that needs an extremely high amount of virtual memory (dealing with extremely large file sizes for example). Past 8gb you'll probably run into more of a bottleneck with drive speed and indexing than from the size of your page file. It is however suggested that you set a fixed pagefile size, rather than a system-determined one since Windows, from what I've seen, tends to cause some performance issues when it suddenly needs to boost it's size... Usually because whatever it is that you're doing is also using heavy system resources. The downside to this performance hit is that it isn't predictable and may cause instability (as well as a nice notice saying "windows is allocating more memory" to steal the focus of whatever game you happen to be playing. This may be less frequent of an issue on more capable systems, but just the fact that a notice will pop up letting you know that whatever you were just doing is now likely broken, is enough of a concern.

[FMod]

Required paging file size has nothing to do with the amount of RAM installed. Contrary to false but popular belief, the more RAM you have, the smaller your paging file needs to be. Windows rule of 1.5x installed RAM comes from an assumption on programmers' part that, since RAM was expensive when it was written, you only bought as much RAM as you needed to only just perform your tasks.

 

I run 4x8 GB of RAM, so Windoze suggests I use 48GB of pagefile. Which is silly. So I set it a paging file of "Custom Size" with minimum of 16MB and maximum of 8192MB on SSD. My uptime on Windoze has been about 3 weeks by now, last time I rebooted between Xmas and NYE. The paging file is still at 16MB. If OS needed any more, it would have enlarged it.

 

 

The issue has been discussed here: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/797458-page-file/page__hl__pagefile

Or you can read this article for a more technical explanation and instructions on how correctly determine your needed page file size: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

 

Of course, usually you only need 16MB. I would suggest setting it at 16-8192 MB for the system to decide and see if it ever grows above 16 MB. If it does, fix it at 2x or more of the maximum that it has ever grown to. If it doesn't, change nothing.

Fixed paging file size is strongly preferable on HDD. However it only matters if it's actually used. If it isn't, then 16-8192 is a better option.

Final word, never disable the paging file.