I am currently running Windows XP Professoional 32-bit with 2x2GB 800MHZ PC6400 in Dual Mode (4GB), with a motherboard that supports 8GB of RAM. Windows detects only 3GB of RAM because of PAE ( http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEdrv.mspx ) and can only support up to 4GB of RAM. The other 1GB is used for the I/O, video card etc... SO MY QUESTION IS: What should i set the Page File to be in order to get maximum performance? I If i multiply the min by 1.5 (3x1.5) that equals 4,500GB. For the max i would multiply the number of ram by 3 (3x3) which equals 9,000GB. BUT , The page file only goes up to 4GB!? -Should i install a 64-bit Windows XP? -Do i need the page file since i have 4GB of RAM? or 3GB available? MY PAGE FILE SETTIGNS ARE AS FOLLOWS, which i thought were best from these following websites: 1. 4 gig [Archive] - techPowerUp! Forums 2. TweakHound's Super XP Tweaking Guide - The Page File Page file is currently allocated on a 3GB Fat32 Partition. Min is 2048. Max is 2900.
basically for normal use the swapfile / pagefile shold be set at double the amount of, in your system, double the amount of usable RAM, set both Min & Max should be set to the same value i'm not the best person to answer this because i use Linux & haven't used XP for a while now, however, the realese of 64bit drivers was slow, although, things could have changed every little helps convert all your partition to NTFS because FAT32 is limited to a maximum filesize of 4Gb, there is a utility to convert a partition from FAT32 to NTFS & FAT32 is an altogether security nightmare file system, which is another reason to convert it to NTFS basically the Windoze likes to be in charge because it thinks it knows best, however, the setting of the swapfile size is 1 example were Windoze is wrong, because Windoze is constantly changing the swapfile size, which if it isn't resizing the swapfile Windoze can use more resources doing what you want it to do
I'm running the 64-bit version of Vista, and I can see that the maximum amount of page file is higher than 4 GB. But a page file of 4 GB is more than enough, because 3-4 GB won't get really full in XP, so there is no real need for swapping memory. This is most likely to be the cause of the 4 GB limit. You can convert to NTFS by going to command prompt and entering: Code: convert X: /fs:ntfs /v At X: enter the letter of the partition you wish to convert to NTFS (in your case, the partition where the page file is stored). /V is optional, it shows the progress of the conversion. OR Create multiple pagefiles on multiple partitions. Select a 2nd partition, enable it, and enter a custom size there as well. Use more partitions if you need.
Ok, so i have 2 NTFS har disks. One is 80GB with windows installed (drive C: ). The other is 40GB (drive D: ) which i use for miscellaneous files. I partitioned drive D creating a 3GB FAT32 (drive F: ) which is used for the page file. Since i have 3GB of RAM available for the system, i would want to set the pagefile to double of that of the ram (6GB) in my Drive F: (I converted it to FAT32 because this type of file system is faster than NTFS when dealing with a lower GB partition). Is this what i should do?
To have Windows choose the best paging file size, click System managed size. The recommended minimum size is equivalent to 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your system, and 3 times that figure for the maximum size. Example, if you have 256 MB of RAM, the minimum size would be 384, the maximum size would be 1152.Read in detail here
Thanks Rockaway for that website i actually read everything lol, i set my system's pagefile to "System Managed size"... now as for my other drive where i also want some pagefile allocated, should i set it to 6GB MIN and 6GB MAX? (just like it says in that link you gave me)... And im still waiting for RHochstenbach's reply. Wow, all this talk about pagefile and trying to get a max performance boost out of all of it... when im sure i don't even need it oh well, its an addiction.
The pagefile is mostly used to swap memory when the RAM is full. But 3 GB of RAM won't get full in most cases, when running XP. A big pagefile is recommended for systems with less than 1 GB of RAM (in XP). So for best performance, I'd recommend a pagefile between 1024 and 2048 MB.
