XP swapfile - is it needed.

[Reece]

Hi, I have my swapfile size set to 2 gig (min & max), although with 2 gig ram is it needed, will removing it cause any performance changes?
Thought I'd check before removing as reinstalling the file may no longer reside at the front of the Drive!
Many thanks.

[sonar732]

The main thing to think about is what type of high end applications do you use for the 2gb of physical ram. Also, compare the access time of your hard drive vrs. the access time of your memory. I keep my paging file set at 75% of my physical memory.

Lastly, if you don't understand much about virtual memory...there's always google.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Reece

Hi, I have my swapfile size set to 2 gig (min & max), although with 2 gig ram is it needed, will removing it cause any performance changes?
Thought I'd check before removing as reinstalling the file may no longer reside at the front of the Drive!
Many thanks.

Put it onto itÄs own partition. not for speed gains, but HD order. That way, you also can defrag it without needing special (in my experience: unreliable) tools for that, becasue the swapfile is one file indeed, and fragmantizses as well. If on a partition, you can just switch it off once or twice in a motnh, format the partition, and switch the swapfile on again.

For FS9, in the past there were reprots by people saying their sim was running faster withiout a swapfile. But that depends on their system and graphical settings, I assume. Golden rules say to keep file size fixed at an equal value like your RAM, or 1.5 as much. and to every rule, their are exceptions - others swear on letting Windows manage the file size.

If you are not running anything of the latest, memory demanding stuff with plenty of textures, and your gfx card not having ridiculously small RAM, I think the most comfortable option simply is not to care for your swapfile too much at all. Remember, in the past it was meant to compensate for small RAM in PC systems.

[SUBMAN1]

3 GB to 4 GB - probably not. I never hit it hardly with 2 GB.

-S

[Reece]

It sounds like I may as well stick with it, games like SH4 need 2 gig so having that extra bit of virtual memory might pay then, I just had an idea that machines over 1 gb virtual memory was virtually redundant! From what I gather is that if the largest application that I ever used was 1 gb and ram 2 gb then virtual memory would be redundant, but nowadays would be more like 3 or 4 gb.
Thanks.