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32bit OS with 4GB Ram -- swap still needed ??

(6 posts)
  • Started 6 months ago by bamsan
  • Latest reply from whs
  • Topic Viewed 919 times


bamsan
bamsan
Posts: 80

I understand that swap file is meant to be the extension to memory. Any 32 bit OS has the limit of addressing memory of 2^32 bytes, ie. 4 GB

So on a system that's equipped with more than 4 GB of RAM, there's no way for any 32 bit OS to address anything beyond 4 GB boundary; so is there any reason to allocate swap for 32 bit OS that runs on a 4 GB system ??

Posted 6 months ago #
 
mysticgeek
mysticgeek
Posts: 250

I disable mine. In fact I wrote an article about it .. "wanna see it? Here it go!"
http://blogs.howtogeek.com/mys.....page-file/

Posted 6 months ago #
 
ScottW
ScottW
Posts: 2569

"Thank you very much!" An ILC reference is pretty obscure. I wonder how many people get it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfzDUpB88x4

Posted 6 months ago #
 
whs
whs
Posts: 6322

Some more thoughts:

1. 32bit adresses 4GB's. But Vista really only uses 3.2GB's because some of the other space is used by components like graphics, etc.
2. The page file (swap file as you call it) is typically 2 times the size of the RAM. The more RAM, the bigger it is.
3. Superfetch manages the virtual memory which is RAM plus Pagefile (e.g. 12GB's for a 4GB RAM system). Your system would look very sad if you deleted the pagefile in Vista. In XP that may be another story because XP had no Superfetch - it had a Prefetch.
4. I understand you can gain performance if you put your pagefile on an internal disk (not partition) that is different from the OS disk. But I have not tried that yet. That's on my to do list.

PS. Here is some reading material: http://blogs.technet.com/askpe.....boost.aspx

Posted 6 months ago #
 
Deney
Posts: 36

So this would not be advisable on Vista? Mine currently allocated is 3881MB, I have 4GB of RAM on 32bit, does this seem right?

Posted 6 months ago #
 
whs
whs
Posts: 6322

Deney, I don't know from where you got the number. I got mine from Task Manager > Performance and it is 6843MB with the same configuration as yours. In 32bit you have to take 3325MB as RAM basis, not 4GB's.

Posted 6 months ago #
 

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