Okay, i'll try not to mix them up. That site you mentioned seems interesting, there is a good debate if you search for "page file". Some interesting points. In particular, the post about Windows being overly agressive with swapping programs out to disk when not focused. That's what I mean about multi-tasking. With a page file and 1GB RAM, if I open Mozilla Firefox and The Bat!, if I work in The Bat for a while and the switch to Firefox, it had to load Firefox back in from disk again. This is despite the fact that there is over 750MB of free RAM. Worse still, it doesn't seem to load all of Firefox back in - if you click on a menu or another tab, that has to be paged back into memory again as well!Shining Arcanine wrote:http://channel9.msdn.com/
Ask there about what happens when you turn off the paging file. I did and if I recall several people (including one or two guys from Microsoft) wouldn't leave me alone until they got me to turn my paging file back on. When I did, performance seemed to improve; of course since you're using flash memory that doesn't matter as access times are the same regardless of where the data is located.
By the way, the paging file from Windows NT and swap file from Windows 9x are two different things. Please don't use the terms interchangeably.
BTW, that's from a default install with a few services turned off. I have not used any of the registry paging hacks or otherwise adjusted VM usage.
Nice quote: "When you minize, Windows trims the working application's working set." That's madness.
Currently I'm running Firefox (four tabs), The Bat, Folding@Home, Trillian, Directory Opus and BNR3. 229MB in use, no page file. Everything is nice and responsive, no delays at all. Having a good RAID card probably helps a little, although 771MB for disk cache isn't exactly a small amount.
I'm not saying it's for everyone. 3DS Max probably wouldn't run, and I'm doubtful about Photoshop as well. But Paintshop Pro is fine, as are all my other apps, even if they use hundreds of megabytes of ram at a time. Joint Operations (game) seems okay as well. The microsoft guys were probably upset that their tech didn't seem to be all it was cacked up to be.
BTW, how does having the page file increase performance relative to access times? The page file does not store pages sequentially, at least not by design.