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Question: For those using WinXP, FS2004 with 1GB of mem...

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Guest Jack172

At 1600x1200x32 in windowed mode, with a high level of detail area like Hong Kong, after you have been flying a bit, could you bring up task manager and check your Page File usage. For a 512MB system it shows from 350-500MB of usage, I'm wondering if adding another 512MB of memory if that drops the page file usage?

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The solid answer to this is . . . an unequivocal NO! What I don't understand is the role of the swap file in FS. I had 512mb and moved to 1GB, and saw no difference whatsoever in swap file use despite all that nice ram sitting there waiting for something to do, which seemed odd to me. So in an attempt to perhaps answer your real question, does reduction or elimination of a HDD swap file have any effect on FS performance behavior? I set up this experiment:Installed RamDiskNT, and allocated 512mb to free ram, and 512mb to a ""virtual swap file." This nifty but scary software lets you set up your swap file in ram instead of your drive. Net result? Well, as predicted, FS continued to do its swap file thing, this time swapping to ram instead of HDD. Performance effect? Absolutely undiscernable difference. My situation may be the exception though, since I am using the very fast and low CPU overhead Cheetah 15.3K drives. With 512mb installed on my system, I still had plenty of "free ram" after flying for an hour. It certainly sounds like a good thing, but I'm not seeing much evidence in the RW.Noel


Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

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What should improve performance for FS is if you could create a large enough RAM drive (a drive within RAM only) and install FS9 into it. Of course, that would require over 3G GB of RAM for a full install.By default, Win XP creates a minimum page file size of 1.5 times your RAM amount and a maximum size of 3 times your RAM amount. How big should your page file be? That depends on your RAM amount. Look at the Total Commit Charge (the total amount of physical and virtual [page file] memory in use by the OS and all active programs). Is it greater than the amount of RAM on board? If the answer is "no, not even close," then you might want to reduce the size of your page file or set it as a fixed value. This can be a risk in performance because of changes in your memory usage. If the answer is "yes, or very close to it," then you would need to increase your page file accordingly.Also, if you have two or more physical hard drives, you can split the page file across multiple physical drives. This will enhance page file performance because your IDE/P-ATA/S-ATA/RAID disk controller can process multilple read/write requests simultaneously.My page file is set at 512MB minimum and 1024MB maximum. If your system does not require paging at all or very little paging, then you would notice little or no performance enhancement in FS9 with RAM page file.Perhaps later I'll run FS9 and see what my task manager performance data looks like.Cloud9

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Guest Jack172

Thanks Noel, I suspected that windows/FS would still rely on the swap file even with 1GB of ram. Maybe I'll hold back on extra ram.I moved my swap file to a separate drive on a separate controller and fixed it size to 1024MB. FS runs fine with 512MB of RAM here, but I wondered if anyone went to 1GB and could show it improves performance.Other posts I read of Ram upgrades mentioned less suttering, but that seems subjective, I was hoping to find some hard evidence.

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I have my virtual memory deactivated ,as a result a lot of memory is used upon system boot( around 128mb) but the boot is faster (it doesn't need to write to the swap file) and I get no HDD activity light unless loading some file, I never experienced a "virtual memory set too low" with 1GB of phisical...All in all I get a faster smoother system without swapfile.Jos

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Guest Jack172

Great info being posted here.So with FS2004 running 1600x1200x32, TaskManager shows I have appx 10% free physical ram:Physical Memory Total 523804, Available 47500. Commit Total shows 460260.For those with 1GB of RAM, what numbers do you get.

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I added 512 more ram up to 1GB and truthfully cannot tell any difference in so far as stutters go. I still get them. The only thing that may have improved is drawing scenery views like panning or looking right and left. The scenery draws faster.I now think it may not have been necessary to add the RAM. Also I do not see any difference in my overall PC performance with other applications. If I saw any I think it would be to appease my decision :-)Of course YMMVBill

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