Virtual memory on or off windows performance

cash4carti · Jul 19, 2022

Hello everyone, I wanted to share a question that has been on my mind. I know virtual memory is needed for playing most current games and I know it's useful. The question I'm wondering is, I think that turning off virtual memory and then memory compression can give me performance in the windows interface. Because the dependency on the disk will decrease. what are your ideas?

Berton · Jul 19, 2022

Virtual Memory [Paging file/swapfile] gives a program the ability to perform better on large files when the physical memory has filled up and older data can be swapped out to VM without having the program crash or lose a document being worked on. To avoid use of it merely requires having as much physical memory modules installed, e.g. having 128GB RAM may never require VM. A few things that need more RAM are video editing, gaming, working on large documents such as spreadsheets and databases, accounting programs, etc. I've not played with memory compression, no need yet. The main issue with memory, data stored in it, is that a crash or reboot will cause loss of that data. Some programs have a setting that can autostore or recover against such an event.

jimbo45 · Jul 20, 2022

Berton said:
Virtual Memory [Paging file/swapfile] gives a program the ability to perform better on large files when the physical memory has filled up and older data can be swapped out to VM without having the program crash or lose a document being worked on. To avoid use of it merely requires having as much physical memory modules installed, e.g. having 128GB RAM may never require VM. A few things that need more RAM are video editing, gaming, working on large documents such as spreadsheets and databases, accounting programs, etc. I've not played with memory compression, no need yet. The main issue with memory, data stored in it, is that a crash or reboot will cause loss of that data. Some programs have a setting that can autostore or recover against such an event.

Hi there
It's not so simple -- this is not a 1:1 relationship. Disk I/O is generally very slow compared with cpu / memory operations -- so what the computer tends to do is store "pending I/O" requests into the fast areas of the disk controller or cache area --so always when buying HDD's look for those with the largest and fastest cache systems for best performance. These are "queued up" and then executed while the computer is doing other things e.g waiting for keyboard input or output to video. Since also only a small amount of RAM is currently in use at any one time the system makes an "internal" map of RAM use so each time an app gets focus again its entire memory space doesn't need to be reloaded again. This is known essentially as demand paging and works essentially by a complex algorithm known as LRU or "Least Recently Used" which are flushed first.

Don't confuse with Swapping where an entire users address space is written to disk -- a much slower process and only really of concern to multi-user systems with many users concurrently logged on. such as on Linux, and Windows servers. The inactive ones can be "Swapped out" in their entirety.

Unless you really know EXACTLY what you are doing - just leave these sorts of things for Windows to manage. Chances are any "User fiddling" will just hose it up.

The exact mechanics of how this works is well beyond the scope of what the OP wants to know -- which IMO is leave paging etc to Windows to sort out.

Necrosaro · Jul 20, 2022

jimbo45 said:
Hi there
It's not so simple -- this is not a 1:1 relationship. Disk I/O is generally very slow compared with cpu / memory operations -- so what the computer tends to do is store "pending I/O" requests into the fast areas of the disk controller or cache area --so always when buying HDD's look for those with the largest and fastest cache systems for best performance. These are "queued up" and then executed while the computer is doing other things e.g waiting for keyboard input or output to video. Since also only a small amount of RAM is currently in use at any one time the system makes an "internal" map of RAM use so each time an app gets focus again its entire memory space doesn't need to be reloaded again. This is known essentially as demand paging and works essentially by a complex algorithm known as LRU or "Least Recently Used" which are flushed first.

Don't confuse with Swapping where an entire users address space is written to disk -- a much slower process and only really of concern to multi-user systems with many users concurrently logged on. such as on Linux, and Windows servers. The inactive ones can be "Swapped out" in their entirety.

Unless you really know EXACTLY what you are doing - just leave these sorts of things for Windows to manage. Chances are any "User fiddling" will just hose it up.

The exact mechanics of how this works is well beyond the scope of what the OP wants to know -- which IMO is leave paging etc to Windows to sort out.

I have to agree with this one too. Windows uses page files a lot more then you know even if you had 1 terabytes of ram. It's not about how much ram you have it is what is being done in programs.

jimbo45 · Jul 21, 2022

Necrosaro said:
I have to agree with this one too. Windows uses page files a lot more then you know even if you had 1 terabytes of ram. It's not about how much ram you have it is what is being done in programs.

@Necrosaro

any details on W11 NTLITE -- I used to use that type of thing (assuming it's similar) on XP and W7.

BTW running W2k22 server (free 180 day trial) "modded" for a desktop runs incredibly fast and has zero bloat and a networking system that actually works -- probably a ist or certainly a record for Windows Networking -- the only program "Not installable" has been Macrium since it needs server edition version -- costly !! -- but stand alone iso works and as I've installed the W2k22 server to a vhdx file I just copy that with file explorer when backing it up. Mounting the vhdx on say W11 via select file=xxxx.vhdx, attach vdisk in diskpart I can get access to any of the data files as W11 just then sees the vhdx file as another "Disk". !!

Fastest OS yet !!!! well worth trying - especially as it's free for 180 days !!! - Suits me.

cheers
jimbo

Necrosaro · Jul 21, 2022

jimbo45 said:
@Necrosaro

any details on W11 NTLITE -- I used to use that type of thing (assuming it's similar) on XP and W7.

BTW running W2k22 server (free 180 day trial) "modded" for a desktop runs incredibly fast and has zero bloat and a networking system that actually works -- probably a ist or certainly a record for Windows Networking -- the only program "Not installable" has been Macrium since it needs server edition version -- costly !! -- but stand alone iso works and as I've installed the W2k22 server to a vhdx file I just copy that with file explorer when backing it up. Mounting the vhdx on say W11 via select file=xxxx.vhdx, attach vdisk in diskpart I can get access to any of the data files as W11 just then sees the vhdx file as another "Disk". !!

View attachment 34604

Fastest OS yet !!!! well worth trying - especially as it's free for 180 days !!! - Suits me.

cheers
jimbo

Yes similar just some things that could be removed in older operating system could cause issues with the newer one. There is tons that can be removed though.

Never tried windows server. Would have to take a look