Is it possible to avoid using virtual memory?

[Guest]

I've been wondering about this ever since I came to know about virtual memory.

We know that the idea behind virtual memory is to use part of the hard disk
as if it were RAM, when the actual RAM is not enough.

If I have more than 2 GB of RAM (and I tell windows not to use page file),
will it stay that way? will there be no pagefile.sys? Then what will be
displayed in the PF Usage graph in the Performance tab in the task manager?)

Or is it the case that no matter how much RAM you have, windows will still
use page files?

 

[mikeyhsd]

you might get by with it for a while.
unfortunately there are still some older programs around that DEMAND a page file.
will probably crash if none available.

is there some reason you do not want a page file.

if its a matter of disk space. then you need to get a bigger drive.



(e-mail address removed)



I've been wondering about this ever since I came to know about virtual memory.

We know that the idea behind virtual memory is to use part of the hard disk
as if it were RAM, when the actual RAM is not enough.

If I have more than 2 GB of RAM (and I tell windows not to use page file),
will it stay that way? will there be no pagefile.sys? Then what will be
displayed in the PF Usage graph in the Performance tab in the task manager?)

Or is it the case that no matter how much RAM you have, windows will still
use page files?

 

[Jim]

I've been wondering about this ever since I came to know about virtual
memory.

We know that the idea behind virtual memory is to use part of the hard
disk
as if it were RAM, when the actual RAM is not enough.

If I have more than 2 GB of RAM (and I tell windows not to use page file),
will it stay that way? will there be no pagefile.sys? Then what will be
displayed in the PF Usage graph in the Performance tab in the task
manager?)

Or is it the case that no matter how much RAM you have, windows will still
use page files?

It may or may not use page files depending on the system load. However, if
it needs to use a pagefile, and none are present, the system may hang. In
this case, it will become very slow. Don't for a moment think that there
is an amount of RAM which will preclude the need for a pagefile. Well, yes
there is, but a 32bit machine cannot address that much.

Jim

 

[Guest]

To learn the story of the page file read kb555223

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your time everybody.

I am not in a situation where I don't want to have any virtual memory.

I think, with 32 bit processor you can have upto 4 GB of RAM (is it
correct?). Is there any Operating system or game or application (not the
exceptional ones) that requires more memory than that ! ?

I just asked out of curiosity because, when I had 128 MB RAM, I obviously
had to use virtual memory. Later, when I added 512 MB more, I expected the
page file usage to reduce by at least some amount - but it stayed the same.

Another reason for me asking this question is this: modern 3D action games
require a lot of memory but 512 MB RAM is not enough to accommodate both the
game and other processes in Windows.

I think, with lesser RAM, games spend a lot of time swapping. I thought that
maybe if we could have enough RAM such that there was no need to use page
file, the game could run faster (I may be wrong - games' speed depends on a
lot of other things).

Anyway, once again, thanks for sharing your thoughts and facts.

 

[Ron Martell]

I've been wondering about this ever since I came to know about virtual memory.

We know that the idea behind virtual memory is to use part of the hard disk
as if it were RAM, when the actual RAM is not enough.

If I have more than 2 GB of RAM (and I tell windows not to use page file),
will it stay that way? will there be no pagefile.sys? Then what will be
displayed in the PF Usage graph in the Performance tab in the task manager?)

Or is it the case that no matter how much RAM you have, windows will still
use page files?

Windows XP is designed to operate with a page file and not having one
will actually make your RAM usage less efficient. Here is why.

Almost everything - Windows components, device drivers, application
programs, etc - always asks for larger memory allocations than what is
usually needed under normal circumstances. And by design Windows must
identify memory address space to satisy all of the requests that are
issued.

So what normally happens is that Windows allocates addresses in RAM
only to those portions of the allocation requests that are actually
being used, and uses space in the page file for the unused portions.
If there is no page file then Windows is forced to allocate RAM for
the full amount of all requests, including the unused portions.

Here, for example, is some current data from my own machine:

Physical RAM: 1 gb
PF Usage (from Task Manager): 556 mb
Actual size of the page file: 80 mb
Actual page file usage (= active memory content currently in the page
file) = 36 mb

What these figures tell me is that there is 520 mb of "phantom" page
file usage, mostly attributable to unused portions of memory
allocation requests. If there were no page file then RAM would have
to be used for this, resulting in reduced disk cache etc. And that in
turn would adversely affect overall performance. In fact with my
current load of open applications the system would probably crash due
to "out of memory" if there were no page file.

Hope this clarifies the situation.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. It helped me understand things that I
didn't previously know, about memory and related stuff.

Thanks a lot for the help ! !