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5gb ddr2 ram, enough to disable file paging?


MillenX

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Don't do it son. I have 4GB and even while gaming with 1.5GB free, I sometimes get warning to close programs because low memory. The system knows better what's good for it :P

Edited by TheWalrus
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Wow. I set it to 1024-2048mb paging size for observation. I seldom play game on this pc. I only have nvidia 9500gt 512mb and the most often game, well, most often but not very often game I play is l4d2. It's not until my C:/ ran out of space in less than 700mb would I touch it..

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hi, I have 5gb ddr2 800mhz ram. Is it enough for me to disable file paging?
That would depend on what you use the machine for. I would recommend, if you *really* want a general idea of how much memory (actual, committed virtual address pages) your system is using, this can be done in perfmon as a Data Collector Set (for gathering data over time) - again, it's going to be an estimate, but it's a very good, close estimate to what your usage patterns will require in physical RAM (or RAM + paging file, so you can determine if you need a paging file or not).

In perfmon as a User Defined Data Collector Set (start > run > perfmon > Data Collector Sets > User Defined > Action > New > Data Collector Set > Advanced > Performance Counter), you can add the "Working Set" counter under the "Process" object, and select the "_Total" instance. Then, add the "Cache Bytes", "Pool Nonpaged Bytes", Pool Paged Bytes, and "Available Bytes" counters under the "Memory" object. These give you:

Working Set - Gives you the amount of memory pages that have been used recently by running processes, and as such are almost all going to have been mapped into physical RAM. This number will be larger than the actual total process memory utilization due to shared pages between processes being counted multiple times as a process working set.

Cache Bytes - This number gives you a real-time display of the value of the system cache, the system driver resident bytes, the system code resident bytes, and the kernel paged pool bytes that are cached in RAM.

Pool Nonpaged Bytes - This counter gives you the amount of the kernel nonpaged pool resource size - this pool is ALWAYS mapped into RAM (thus nonpaged pool, and cannot be paged out to a paging file).

Pool Paged Bytes - This counter gives you the amount of the kernel paged pool resource size - this pool contains memory data that can be written to disk (in the paging file) if necessary, but is usually stored in RAM until the memory manager determines it needs physical RAM pages (when the system RAM gets full/busy/etc).

Available Bytes - This gives you the amount of physical RAM available for system use, and is equal to the total amount of memory assigned to the standby (cached), free, and zero page lists (I won't explain them here, it's too deep for this discussion - Windows Internals is good for a deep dive on these if you really want to learn more).

Now, spend a few hours doing the things you'd normally do, and then go back into perfmon and stop/review your Data Collector log. Specifically, add up the averages and high-water marks for these 5 counters (they're all in bytes, keep that in mind - not MB or GB, but bytes), and you have an approximation of the actual virtual address footprint of your machine. To a very close approximation, you'll know how much virtual address pages your system uses, and in general, to where the pages are going. If this number is always less than the amount of physical RAM (in bytes) installed on your machine, you don't need a paging file (unless you run apps that explicitly don't run without one, and those are rare). If the number is ever close (and you'll have to determine what level of "close" you want to abide, if this is the case), you're going to want at least a smaller paging file, and if your usage patterns show numbers that are always way over the amount of physical RAM with your perfmon results, obviously, you need a paging file.

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