new hard driv, page files and a gig of ram...

B

bananaman

n00b
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
39
Hi,

I was reading the 7 page thread on whether it is necessary and it was mentioned that people didnt get all the benefit they could from a gig of ram bcause the page file was not sorted properly and windows carried on using it anyway, underutilising the free ram.

so... to my question, i have just ordered another 512 stick of ram and also a new 120gb maxtor SATA drive. the hard drvie is not going to have windows on rather just have my games and docs etc.

Would it be a good idea to make a 1 gig partition on the new drive purely for the page file as i read somewhere that it speeded things up not to have the page file on the same disk at windows - but this is complicated if it is on the same disk as my games :p .

Or should i delete the page file completely!? will 1gig of ram be enough. If i just make a small one will windows use the ram more effectively, set it manually or let windows sort it ( is that ever a good idea :p )?

Sorry for so many questions, any help would be greatly appreciated

for rest of specs see sig
thanks

NANA

edit : spelling
 
thank!

pretty much answer all my questions- except one, shall i put he page file on the HD with windows on or the gaming/document one?

i mostly do gaming, so i would guess leave it with windows?

thanks

NANA
 
I would just leave the page file alone. You could test turning it off completely if you have 1GB of RAM and see if your performance increases and if you have any applications that are going to require a page file like photoshop but other then that if you dont see a real world performance gain theres no point in moving the page file all over the place. Windows does a pretty good job of taking care of its own page file so usually its best left alone.
 
I have a gig of RAM and I do not run a Page File. I haven't had any problems yet.

CV, BF1942, Halo, Dungeon Siege, UT2003, Q3, and many other games.

/IoWnZa
 
and if you do video editing,photoshop and 3d modeling, is it better to keep the pagefile if you have 1Gb or more
 
maybe try a pagefile on both drives, see how it affects things
 
I think you want the pagefile on another non OS HD only if the other drive is the same exact speed/specs or you get loss in performance. I also run without a pagefile with 0 problems. Plus I don't have a lot of HD space so every little bit that isn't being taken up helps.
 
I run MSFS Flight Simulator and Photoshop CS without a page file. I have a gig of ram, and Adobe yells at me when I open the program, telling me that I should have a page file and I ignore that. It works fine. Also, a gig of RAM is great.
 
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php


Read the above page. It will tell you why its a bad idea to disable the page file no matter what amount of RAM you have.

Remember, the page file is used for more than just "extra RAM". That fact seems to be lost with most people though.....
 
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