Should I increase or decrease the size of my Page File for Virtual Memory (stats included)?

Question

Hello all!

I have compiled some statistics from my performance graphs shown in the task manager. My question is whether or not these stats indicate a necessity for a Virtual Memory limit change. If anyone has a concise answer, I will give you a gold star :)

General Comp Stats:

OS Name: Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit

System Model: HP Compaq 6730b System Type x64-based PC

Processor: Intel Core2 Duo CPU P8600@ 2.40GHz, 2401 Mhz, 2 Cores, 2 Logical Processors

Installed Physical Memory (RAM): 2.00 GB

Total Physical Memory: 1.93 GB

Available Physical Memory: 910 MB

Total Virtual Memory: 3.86 GB

Available Virtual Memory: 2.54 GB

Page File Space: 1.93 GB

**Below are 2 test environments determined by whether or not the external monitor is in use.
I then used 3 variables of processing usage by starting with 0 programs running, save background programs (which I have thinned out extensively and properly). The second has just a bare bones version of Firefox running with sites such as Facebook and Pandora being accessed. The final is the most labor intensive for running processes which has the following programs running with multiple aspects being uses in each: Firefox, Outlook, Excel, FileMaker Pro 12 and Windows Explorer.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Averages from performance tab stats in Task Manager**

Without separate monitor attached (charging or not charging):

*Programs Open: Nothing

Memory Scale on the left: 694MB

Commit (MB) (System Field): 947//3952

Physical Memory Stats (MB):

• Cached: <837>
• Available: <1341>
• Free: <528>
• Total: <1976>


**Programs Open: Firefox w/o toolbars, search extensions or add-ins other than “plug and play”

Memory Scale on the left: 837MB

Commit (MB) (System Field): 1149//3952

Physical Memory Stats (MB):

• Cached: <975>
• Available: <1139>
• Free: <184>
• Total: <1976>

***Programs Open:
Firefox (same settings w/multiple tabs running flash instances) Outlook, Excel, Win. Explorer +FileMaker Pro 12

Memory Scale on the left: 1.05GB

Commit (MB) (System Field): 1315//3952

Physical Memory Stats (MB):

• Cached: <906>
• Available: <894>
• Free: <3>
• Total: <1976>

\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//

With separate monitor attached (charging or not charging):

*Programs Open: Nothing

Memory Scale on the left: 702MB

Commit (MB) (System Partition): 989//3952

Physical Memory Stats (MB):

• Cached: <1003>
• Available: <1279>
• Free: <291>
• Total: <1976>

**Programs Open: Firefox w/o toolbars, search extensions or add-ins other than “plug and play”

Memory Scale on the left: 767MB

Commit (MB) (System Field): 1070//3952

Physical Memory Stats (MB):

• Cached: <977>
• Available: <1210>
• Free: <249>
• Total: <1976>

***Programs Open:
Firefox (same settings w/multiple tabs running flash instances) Outlook, Excel, Win. Explorer +FileMaker Pro 12

Memory Scale on the left: 978MB

Commit (MB) (System Field): 1257//3952

Physical Memory Stats (MB):

• Cached: <933>
• Available: <1012>
• Free: <92>
• Total: <1976>

During these trials, there were reports of generally low CPU usage (less than 15 on average) in the meter located left of the graph scale. The only times that the usage spiked was when a program started, but then shortly plateaued thereafter.

I have fine-tuned my W7 to exclude all of the BS services and features, regularly clean up the drive and compress large archive folders from Outlook…in fact, I have quite a bit of HDD space free.
Anywhooskers, should I decrease the Page File size? Increase? I’ve been getting mixed answer from the interwebz , so I figured posing the question would return superior results…someone prove me right?!

Answer 1

these are the things most likely to affect VM



1 the Physical disk that your swap file is located on having it on its own

...disk or at least its own partition can improve things generally

...although you may be fighting its own algorithms that assume its swap

...file will be fragmented, sometimes fragmentation actually helps.

2 the min max values can be set the same so that windows doesnt waste

...time asking for more space

3 turning off VM altogether.

4 the rule of thumb is VM file should be 1.5 x the physical ram size thats because

...there is some secret little algorithm going on inside the Dynamic memory allocation

...module.

5 VM is not the only thing that affects whats going on. Other performance settings

...have effects such as Caching. There are tweeks to mess with that.



as for your testing, i admire your efforts but windows is in charge, and you simply

arent giving it much of a test.

most of what you might try can affect system start up times quite a lot

one way or the other, and not general operation, and that yields one vital

piece of information, namely



the system is very busy at system start, much busier than you can hope to make it

using things like outlook and a browser.



Inevitably it boils down to this

the things that make a system fast are



1 the throughput of the mainboard chipset

2 can the peripherals keep up

3 how much continuous activity there are with peripherals



running programs like outlook that are effectively 99% idle waiting for you to click something

or type something is almost worthless as a test.

Answer 2

I am surprised it runs at all well. you are messing with virtual memory which you obviously do not understand, and missing the big problem, you should have at least 4 GB RAM for the enterprise edition. Whatever you do with pagefile sizes the read/write times for continuously pushing needed data from RAM to disk, then pulling it back as required will seriously impact performance. Virtual memory will totally stop the machine if it runs out. what happens then is you get messages of incorrect size when there is not enough room to push something to disk which is needed later, so a currently running program has stopped because it can not pass data to RAM. In many cases this has crashed the program by the time the popup loads, or even stops it popping up and the machine totally locks up. Often this results in loss or corruption of data. If the machine is running a background update I have seen it trash the system. Virtual memory should be as big as you can allow, but if you actually bother to read the options when setting it, there is one option for allow system to control it. Obviously this lets the system monitor its' usage and as soon as it sees it getting close to full increases it by a small amount. It can continue to do that right up to the point your disk becomes so near full it would be dangerous to increase it. At this point your drive would normally be showing RED in Computer and you should be seriously considering deleting masses of the biggest files or fitting a bigger disk. You are putting so much faith in these reports which really mean absolutely nothing.

Answer 3

Some PC's are not limited to Physical Memory and can expand into Virtual Memory (space on your hard disk). Windows can increase this allocated virtual space when it needs to. Don't worry, the process doesn't take long, and things may take longer to operate while it's happening - go get yourself a cup of coffee and it will have finished when you get back.

Answer 4

Set it to 1.5% of your ram.Your ram is 2 GB so keep it 3 GB but don't set it in c: because it is the drive in which windows is kept.