Page file or no page file ?

[jorandp 0]

Hi experienced simmers,Just need your advice on the paging (swap) file and its impact on game performance.Since years over sim forums, I have noticed all sorts of "trues" concerning paging file, in opposed directions, such as:a) Microsoft versionSet page file to 0, save, and reset to "system will manage":( Guru 1 versionPage file value sould be 1,5 your ram (lowest value) and x 2 the result (highest value)c) Guru 2 versionPage file value should be same (1,5 your ram) at both lowest and highest valuesd) Guru 3 versionPage file should be simply 0Would really appreciate to share your experience. Since I have 2x130gb hard disk, should I really worry about it ?Also, can I get the page file on my D drive (where are is my system init files) and have FSX running on my C drive, without risk ? When I try that, I get a warning that I could overwrite an already existing file in my d drive as well. I am asking this as with FSX I want to loose no chance to release memory for better performance as I am doing not too bad so far after tweaking but with no margin for big improvement.I am running FS will all scenery details at max, except see (1xhigh) and no traffic at all (no plane, no cars, no boats), no plane shadow, and anysotropic filtering.I made those choices for setting as for me (and this is just personnal feeling) the best added value for FSX is the quality of the scenery (with exception of some landmarks) and I prefer a great looking scenery to traffic if I have no choice. Just a last remark, anisotropic filtering seem really a must in term of texture quality, really impressing, never got so nice scenery with trilinear filtering. For info, my current specs are:CPU AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual core 4400+HD 2x130gb/7200rpmGC Nvidia 6500, 256bm (probably the poorest element)RAM 4x512mb dd2 (2gb total) Many thanks for your commentsSorry If my english is not perfect. Patrick Geneva, Switzerland

[Paul J 349]

While not 100% efficient, due to age, number and configuration of drives, I use:-a good 20gig ide for c:, with no swap set on it;a 3.5 gig ide used only for swap, as d: ;an 80gig, 7200rpm sata for FS 9 and 10 - e: ;and a 200gig, 7200 rpm sata for "stuff" - f: .1). With the current MS desktop os (generally XP) you have access to 4gig of ram. Dependent upon the application(s) your pc could, potentially use all of that, and at that time it will begin swapping out to disk. And your performance will plummet. So, for the while, we need hard drive swap space, period. It normally will be 150% of your physical ram; but, however - it doesn't have to reside on the os's drive: The easy way:- you will get a performance boost by placing it on another (physical) drive that is dedicated to swap. (You can dig up lower-sized "OK" drives a dime a dozen nowadays). 2). It's not a good idea to put your application - FS - on the OS's drive, as both FS and the OS will be "working" the drive simultaneously.3). The hard way:- I may be wrong (it's been a while), but to add a partition to your d: - under Windows - which is what you are doing - you will need to move the data off the drive, re-format the drive, creating two new partitions (swap and data) - then move your data back. To add a swap space partition to your existing d: - live - without losing information - you will need to beg borrow or steal an application which will do this for you. There are a number on the market, but I haven't used one in years. "Disk Manager" comes to mind, and is still available. This is more risky. Hope this helps.

[jorandp 0]

Thanks for your time Paul,Am a bit confused concerning your two statements here bellow:"The easy way:- you will get a performance boost by placing it on another (physical) drive that is dedicated to swap. (You can dig up lower-sized "OK" drives a dime a dozen nowadays)"and "To add a swap space partition to your existing d: - live - without losing information - you will need to beg borrow or steal an application which will do this for you. There are a number on the market, but I haven't used one in years. "Disk Manager" comes to mind, and is still available. This is more risky" So far, I got:FSX, FS9 and swap file on c/drive, and,O/S, boot files on d/drive.Do you mean #### is risky to change live location of the swap from c to d drive ?Thanks for your clarification.Patrick

[Paul J 349]

Well - it's mostly about disk I/O: you have 2 sata drives; normally it would be C: drive with the Windows XP operating system on it, and a D: with your FS on it, right? This doesn't matter. You can put swap on either - say disabled on C: and "1000 min" and "1500 max" on the D: You could do the same with the C:, with a similar result. You could leave it on D: and just select "System managed size". you could put 500 min and 100 max on both without problem - BUT - if and when she starts swapping - your FS performance will really go down with either config..All of these "configs" will work fine, because swapping to disk rarely happens, as most of us have lots of memory nowadays. (OK 1gig in XP running FSX is pretty tight) :-). BUT - IF she starts swapping - your disks have to work twice as hard - reading/writing new data at the same as reading/writing old data, because it will be using the same data bus. I was a little "wrong" when I mentioned re-partitioning a drive to add swap space: you don't need to do this (of course! duh!)- and there should be no risk in putting it on D: OR C:. I just always use a single, separate drive for swap for the above reasons, and wasn't thinking.. It's just easy to buy a cheap, 3, 6, 10 gig ide drive and stick in the box, and make this your swap drive, and don't put it on C: or D: at all. That way - your windows os drive and your FS data drive will not be impacted if and when you begin using swap space. IDE is a seperate I/O stream, and so will not affect your sata disk I/O streams.Sometimes thinking is way too hard!

[FTD1949 0]

The simple answer is Not to let windows manage your page file.Make it 1.5 times your ram at high and low and you should be ok.craig

[Mace 1,909]

If it were me I would put the swap file on the other physical drive (i.e. not the one with your OS on it) and make it 1.5x your system ram both min and max, and be done with it.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2.5 ghz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (94.47), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[jorandp 0]

Thanks for your time, will try that tonight.Have a nice dayPatrick