virtual memory on or off performance

Deleted member 8037 · Aug 24, 2022

In daily use (internet, mail, etc.) can keeping the virtual memory off have a positive effect on performance? As a result, dependency on ssd disk will decrease. am i thinking wrong?

BrianInEngland · Aug 24, 2022

cashcarti said:
In daily use (internet, mail, etc.) can keeping the virtual memory off have a positive effect on performance? As a result, dependency on ssd disk will decrease. am i thinking wrong?

How much RAM do you have? It's best to have SOME pagefile. I have a 16GB pagefile on an SSD and it's not a problem

CountMike · Aug 24, 2022

Some starting standard optimum nowadays is 16GB of RAM for a full blown desktop PC, more only if some programs, virtual machines or heavy multitasking demand.
In my case for instance, moderate multitasking, some graphics, film editing and gaming, virtual memory set on auto is max1.8GB last accessed a month ago so it's practically doing nothing. So it has no positive or negative effect.
But.... windows use disk paging irregardless of page file thru swapfile and that's where fast disk acces helps most.

jimbo45 · Aug 24, 2022

cashcarti said:
In daily use (internet, mail, etc.) can keeping the virtual memory off have a positive effect on performance? As a result, dependency on ssd disk will decrease. am i thinking wrong?

Virtual memory is used for all sorts of things, such as LRU (least recently used, prefetch and a whole host of other things and complex algorithms-- the Windows kernel will handle these far better than any "User tinkering" unless you understand OS internals inside out. Just leave it - although if there is a choice put paging on the fastest disk devices which is probably the only decent parameter that a normal user should touch.

Do not confuse paging with Swapping -- that isn't really relevant on a single user system like Windows, but on servers etc which can have many users concurrently logged on, a copy of the users" work area" can be written out to disk if that user is inactive for a while -- much more data and of course takes longer.

Cheers
jimbo

cereberus · Aug 24, 2022

cashcarti said:
In daily use (internet, mail, etc.) can keeping the virtual memory off have a positive effect on performance? As a result, dependency on ssd disk will decrease. am i thinking wrong?

There is no doubt that having no pagefile is not a good plan as you will run out of memory if you need more memory than the actual RAM. Just let Windowws automatically size the pagefile. It only uses it if needed.

virtual memory on or off performance

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