pingpongpo Posted November 13, 2005 Report Share Posted November 13, 2005 Hi folks, I've recently got a new computer (3.0Ghz P4, 2Gb Ram, 256Mb GC) and was wondering if the pagefile(swapfile?) is set up right as I was expecting slightly better performance then what I'm getting. Does anyone know what it should be and anything else to be looking out for when changing values of stuff? I'm running XP home btw. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daz Posted November 13, 2005 Report Share Posted November 13, 2005 With 2gb of ram you could try turning the pagefile off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waylander Posted November 13, 2005 Report Share Posted November 13, 2005 uuummmm actually you can't really. Win XP always allocates a small page file regardless; also, i understand some apps need to have a pagefile otherwise they cause errors. Covered ad nauseam here anandtech forum you could manually set it to a fixed size so it doesn;t fragment though [not that you'd be hitting it much though, as Daz said] Maybe the performance issues have somethign to do with the "sweetspot" of ram size XP home can handle; i thought it was 512mb-1gb and any increase brought no improved performance... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aal234 Posted November 13, 2005 Report Share Posted November 13, 2005 yep agree with walander the sweet spot for a general use machine is 512 to 1gb. You can try turning off all the noddy xp settings ( all the coloured bars and dumb animation etc)found that helps a lot on machines with less ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frodo Posted November 13, 2005 Report Share Posted November 13, 2005 Turn off the AV software for a short while and see how it goes, oh and make sure the AV software isn't scanning the pagefile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waylander Posted November 13, 2005 Report Share Posted November 13, 2005 i don't think the XP eye-candy is his problem as he has 2 gb ram! it occurs to be that the problem might just be subjective - have you benchmarked your machine? maybe your expectations are just too high? try taking out 1 gb ram and see what happens... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dannyp66 Posted November 14, 2005 Report Share Posted November 14, 2005 i tend to find that the machines i build give me the best performance when they are set up with the memory / page file to about 2gb, if i find apps that are upset at no page file i give them 256 to 512 to get them working. but with 2gb ram i would have a very small page file. most apps shouldn't look for a page file as they should get their allocation from windows itself if they are well written. i have 2 machines both with 2gb and i run just a 1mb page file on both and they are quite happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frodo Posted November 14, 2005 Report Share Posted November 14, 2005 I guess you could set up a ramdrive XP being a 32 bit operating system will allow 2GB for the OS and 2GB for apps in the memory map. I don't know if XP will accept ram tuning like servers so you can use /3gb or /userva in the boot.ini file Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pingpongpo Posted November 14, 2005 Author Report Share Posted November 14, 2005 I've reduced the size of it to see if that helps. I'll see how it goes and report back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaunty Posted November 18, 2005 Report Share Posted November 18, 2005 I've tried no page file and it play s havoc with some programmes, you don't need much, just give it some. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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