Virtual memory settings?

[magg]

Hi,

I have read that vmem should be set to half as much as your ram. But somewhere else I read that it should be double. I have 256mb ram so should I set it to 128 or 512?

Thanks

[glc1]

Everyone has a personal preference of how it should be setup, but there is no real formula. There are several apps out there that are designed to monitor you resources and daily computer usage habits to help you find the correct no. for your system and usage.

[magg]

Thanks guys

Roundeye, thanks for the help with winME.

[quickfoot]

swap is NOT bad, it is good in general

If your swap is at 0% then you can safely cut your swap by half.

the 2 to 2 1/2 is a hold over from older systems.

It allows the OS to remove things that aren't being used to free up more memory for programs that need it.

Microsoft actually does have a formula for determining swap space but I don't usually go by it.

If you have 64 megs of ram or less and intend to use the box a lot I at least double the ram amount of swap space.

If you have at lest 128 MB of ram and are a typical user you probably won't need more than 128 MB of swap, if you start running out of space you can decrease this.

If you have 256 MB of ram or more I still use 128 MB of swap until there is a reason to increase it, there is no need to waste hd space with swap you don't need or use and you can always add more later.

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Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer

[This message has been edited by quickfoot (edited 12-04-2000).]

[RoundEye]

I've read any where from 2 to 2½ times the amout of system ram, with no more than 256MB.
But I've done this tweak and my swap file usage is almost always a 0% anyway. http://users.aol.com/axcel216/98-4.htm#COSW

[onetrueday]

First of all, i have tried the 'swapfileusage=1' in your system.ini and really think it decreased system preformance and realiablity. While that was active, I had at least three times as many crashes. Since i've disabled it, i havent crashed once. Plus, my computer feels faster. That might be due to I have a fast hard drive.

Second, i Dont understand why all the fuss over the size of your swap file. I have 160megs of ram and I have my swap file set to 299/300. Even though i only have a 15 gig hard drive, do I really care about a couple of hundred megs? I read somewhere that win98 likes those numbers to be one apart. I dont know if it's true, but i figure it cant hurt.

[quickfoot]

It shouldn't matter what they are as long as it is more than windows needs.

Windows will dynamically increase your swap file size if it runs out of virtual memory, this dynamic increase can slow down your computer and thus is a performance hit.

You should have ample swap space but if you have more than 128 megs of ram and don't run a huge amount of programs you probably don't even need 128 megs of swap.

Servers of course need more memory and more virtual memory but by having a 300 MB swap space you are probably wasting at least 200 MB of hard drive space (assuming it is a workstation and not a server).

My rule of thumb is twice the memory until you get to about 128 MB. On 128 MB RAM machines I use 128 MB of swap and don't increase it or increase it very little for any additional ram.

You can always add more virtual memory later, the larger your swap file the more change it will become fragmented and it takes space whether it is in use or not.

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Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer

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