Help adjusting Pagfile size

[Gurd99]

Hi,

I'm on vista 32bit with just 4GB RAM. I had the pagefile size at 2GBmin 5GBmax & now set it to 1GBmin 2.5GBmax. Don't really know if it makes a difference when multitasking even when using chrome the memory hoge. But I don't know if programs like photoshop use this pagefile or is their scratch disk separate using your free hdd space?

I don't know if shrinking the pagefile would have major negative effect on photoshop.


thanks

[fritzi93]

Maybe you should stick with system managed size?
It works well enough, and you'll avoid inducing hard crashes by setting your page file too low.
OTOH, having a huge page file is not going to speed up your computer.

The page file size formulas often repeated of 1.5x or 2x your memory are pretty much pointless.
You gain nothing, really, and Windows cannot expand the page file if needed.
You might as well use system managed size.

Should you set minimum/maximum the same?
Well, you avoid fragmenting the page file. Not sure how important that is.
I used to do that until I switched to SSDs for my OS drives. No point after that.

Should you move the page file?
To another physical drive, maybe. Not much sense in having it in a separate partition on your OS drive.

But if you're determined, use system managed size and do this test:
Run several memory intensive programs at once. (Windows should offload to page file programs not currently active.)
With the other programs still up, run Photoshop hard and check commit history (peak memory usage) in Process Explorer:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

You want to know current commit, limit, and peak memory usage.
Current is self explanatory. It is how much memory is currently in use.
Limit is physical memory plus virtual memory. Well, the system reserves some, but close enough.
Peak is what you want to know when you're deliberately trying to use as much memory as you conceivably would.

Peak minus physical memory gives you the minimum size your page file must be. Maximum should be perhaps twice that.

And if you didn't manage to push peak past the size of your physical RAM, that doesn't mean you should eliminate the page file.
Windows doesn't like to do without, even when one has loads of RAM, which you don't.

Let's see how many members take issue with the above.

Good luck.