Will I need much Virtual Memory?

[BabyFaceLee]

Thanks for your input about my enquiry regarding putting 4gb of RAM in my PC.

Here's another question for you!

I understand that it's generally considered good practice to have a Paging File that's 1 and half times that of your RAM. However, if I were to have 4gb of RAM I wonder if I could get away with using much less.
A while back I tweaked my Registry to get Windows to use up the RAM first before resorting to VM - this is the tweak:

HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management - set DisablePagingExecutive = 1 (Forces Windows to use RAM before the Paging File)

I gather that it's not a good idea to set the VM to zero as some Windows tasks will not work but could I get away with a nominal amount of say 100mb??

Any suggestions?
Many thanks

 

[MrGaribaldi]

You're quite right, there is absolutely no need to have 1.5 times you ram if you have a lot of it.

You'll find a thread here where it's discussed if you can drop the paging file entirely or not. It might be old, but the wisdom is still valid

Enjoy

 

[BabyFaceLee]

Hey thanks for your reply Mr Garibaldi.
I've just read the thread you suggested I look at so I'm going to give it a go by disabling it and/or setting it to the minimum to see what happens.
Much appreciated

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Just give it 768MB and then forget about it. All this optimisation is hardly effective, inspite of what some people claim.
Windows will take what it needs from where it wants, regardless of what your settings are.

 

[Tedster]

like RBS said, it's best to let windows do it automatically.
putting a set configuration can bog your system. The only thing I would do is move your paging file and temp files to a second hard drive or partition.

 

[KingCody]

The only thing I would do is move your paging file and temp files to a second hard drive or partition

if you have more than one HDD, then as Tedster suggested it would be best to move the paging file to another HDD. but if you only have 1 HDD, then the paging file should be left where it is (which by default will be on the same partition as the operating system). If you were to put the paging file onto another partition on the same drive, that would actually reduce performance by increasing seek times.

Don't let windows manage the VM settings for you, it does a terrible job. It takes up a huge chunk of space and leaves it fragmented with crap. I have 1GB RAM, and I have my VM set to 2MB minimum and 250MB maximum, it won't need even the 250 that I allowed it, it's just a safety buffer (and as you said earlier, some programs require it anyways).

I don't know what you need 4GB of RAM for, but since you have that much, you really have no need for VM