Page file size on Vista.

[Unfocused]

My new laptop came with Vista and since I only used XP in the past, my question is - what's the optimal page file size here?

As I used the guide from tweakguides.com for XP, I decided to use one from there for Vista. But the optimal pagefile sizes varied (and the same guy wrote both guides).

The guide says:

1GB RAM - Initial and Maximum Pagefile 2GB
2GB RAM - Initial and Maximum Pagefile 1GB
3-4GB RAM and more - Initial and Maximum Pagefile 512MB

Since I have 3 GB, I set it to 512MB and everything was fine, until I played some Battlefield 2142 and after some time the system ran out of memory and I had to close the game.

Could that be a problem with a memory leak in the game, or is my pagefile too small?

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Why don't you let Vista manage the page file size automatically?
I left it on automatic and Vista does an excellent job on managing it, much better then XP did.

I have 3Gig of Ram and Vista's recommend allocation is 4603MB and is currently allocating 3369MB.

 

[Rico]

I don't know that limiting the size of your page file would help a lot as far as performance. Having a smaller page file means you have less virtual memory, which is only used when you run out of Physical Memory in the first place. Having a smaller page file means programs will crash due to no memory as you can see.

I don't see why you wouldn't let windows manage it for you. It already places low-priority data in the pagefile, so game performance would actually be hindered by having a smaller page size as this low priority data will then have to be written to your RAM instead, which your videogame will be using already.

Unless I'm missing something here.

 

[VirusType2]

For the XP tweakguide, he recommended a very high page file size. Much higher than default.

Something is not right here.


I would try it at like 4-8GB. You probably have a huge hard drive, so give it all it wants .. right? You might have 15 small applications and 5 huge applications running, with huge files loaded in some of those programs.

The bigger the page file, the less fileswapping. I'm not sure of any disadvantages besides using a lot of HDD space.

Besides, if you're running 32 bit you're not actually using 3GB of RAM

 

[PimpinPenguin]

Besides, if you're running 32 bit you're not actually using 3GB of RAM

32 bit Windows does support 3 GB of RAM it's 4 GB and above that you need the 64bit version.

 

[Unfocused]

OK, if the problem occurs again, I'll increase the pagefile size or let Vista handle it.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

OK, if the problem occurs again, I'll increase the pagefile size or let Vista handle it.

I really do recommend you let Vista manage it. Setting it a 512MB is all fine and well when your PC is not doing anything demanding, but when you are gaming it is no where near sufficient. That's why i let Vista handle it as when it doesn't require much it lowers the page file and when it does need it for like gaming it increases.
I just tried setting my page file at 512MB and played the Sims 3 and the loading time took 8 minutes versus less than a minute with auto page filing and after 20 minutes i had ran of a memory and the game crashed. I set the page filing back to default and i was able to play it again perfectly.

 

[No Limit]

I would set it to automatic and leave it alone. Adjusting the page file size is used more for debuging purposes, there is no production reason for you to have to do so.

 

[Asus]

I remember an article I believe from anandtech testing Vista (64bit) and virtual memory with games. With some games you had to use a command in the shortcut so they would start the game knowing how to use the virtual address space because otherwise they would not be aware of how Vista differs from XP (which they were programed for). BF2 or BF2142 was one of the games.

FYI virtual memory != RAM seen by your system
Here is a similar article.

Vista uses an application's 2GB user allocation of virtual address space for this purpose, scaling the amount of address space consumed by the WDDM with the amount of video memory actually used. This feature is ahead of its time however as games and applications written to the DirectX 9 and earlier standards didn't have the WDDM to take care of their memory management, so applications did it themselves. This required the application to also allocate some virtual address space to its management tasks, which is fine under XP.

However under Vista this results in the application and the WDDM effectively playing a game of chicken: both are consuming virtual address space out of the same 2GB pool and neither is aware of the other doing the exact same thing. Amusingly, given a big enough card (such as a 1GB Radeon X2900XT), it's theoretically possible to consume all 2GB of virtual address space under Vista with just the WDDM and the application each trying to manage the video memory, which would leave no further virtual address space for anything else the application needs to do. In practice, both the virtual address space allocations for the WDDM and the application video memory manager attempt to grow as needed, and ultimately crash the application as each starts passing 500MB+ of allocated virtual address space.