Exactly what version of Windoz will allow us to utilize our hardware and when will it be here?

Argh!

As you know, the 32-bit OS recognizes less than the 4 GB physical memory.
My plan is to upgrade from 4 GB to 8 GB and from Vista x86 to Vista x64.
This was I would have approx 6.5 GB unused / free after Vista has started.

Then it’s time to say “Good bye Virtual Memory !” … the prehistoric feature when 512 MB RAM was the max you could afford.

1. Programs have memory leaks all the time, quickly flooding your available memory. Even World of Warcraft has caused them. By having a paging file you are far more likely that Windows will catch the leak before it causes a system crash.

2. On machines without a ton of memory (less than 4GB), it can be nice to get some idle programs off the main (faster) memory and into virtual (slower) memory, giving more main memory for your games or whatever application you are using at the time.

Paging File Disadvantages:

1. Virtual memory is FAR slower than physical memory. If something gets move into the virtual memory, and you have to use it, you’ll notice a delay in accessing whatever application got moved. Windows will move things to virtual memory (WHETHER OR NOT YOU HAVE PLENTY OF PHYSICAL MEMORY FREE) simply because it hasn’t been active for X amount of time.

2. Virtual memory makes defragmenting your hard drive less effective (though not by too large of an amount), but this is remedied by having your paging file on it’s own partition. You also could temporarily disable virtual memory for the defragment process.

3. Virtual memory causes unneeded stress on your hard drive.

All in all, I suggest using Virtual Memory if you have less than 4GB. If you have 4GB or more, try disabling it too see if you experience any problems. If you have no crashes with the applications you use, leave it off for good.

I think Virtual Memory is a great safe guard against memory leaks, however, Windows’ behavior on moving application to virtual memory even before the physical memory is reaching capacity is really annoying and a performance hit.

Typical Paging File size is 1.5 times physical memory size, however, at 4GB or over this would be a bit excessive. I suggest a paging file size of 2GB – 4GB if you are at 4GB or more of physical memory.

For those of you concerned about security risks, it’s true that the paging file will save potentially confidential data from memory to the hard disk, however, I wouldn’t worry about it unless you’re planning on having the FBI come seize your PC soon. Accessing the paging file on an updated machine is beyond the capability of most virus-type programs and would likely require actual physical access to the machine.

If you are one of the few that have frequent FBI visits or do REALLY REALLY private stuff on your computer, you can set the paging file to empty out during shutdown, however, this significantly increases shutdown time and isn’t recommended. It’s also easily possible that the FBI would be able to access it even after it has been deleted (even after a secure “shred-style” delete), so it is likely not worth the trouble.

Space limited SSD instead of a huge HDD. In my HP Mini, I have a 16GB SSD. Windows 7 takes up over 12GB! A PF would take up 1.5 GB of precious space. If I upgraded my RAM to 2GB, then my PF would try to be 3GB! Upgrading to a larger SSD would be way too expensive currently.

Also, SSDs are fast at reading and slow at writing. Unecessary writes to the PF would slow the system down.

I like the less noise argument.

Less wear and tear on the Hard drive. Might not be a big deal for a HDD, but a SSD’s
Another problem with PFs is that they get fragmented. (If you allow windows to manage their size, and let it grow as needed) Many people say there is no benefit to putting the PF on a different logical partition of the same physical drive as the OS. I disagree, because if you put it on a dedicated partition, you ensure it never gets fragmented. Alternatively, you can just force it to one size so it won’t grow. This assumes you have enough contiguous free space available for the PF.

Important line:
“When no page file exists, or the page file is insufficient, the system reserves some virtual memory in
the physical memory for its paging needs.”

In translation, if you don’t have page file paging memory will be still used in physical memory which is surely faster then on HDD. And due to fact that paging is done even if there is a LOT LOT of free memory there are some gains when working without PF.

Which applications need PF to work I really don’t know and as a programmer I would really like to see the problem which can’t be solved without using PF.

Anyway, I work with 4gb XPx64 and without PF. I have one Linux VM(with 1gb reserved) working almost all time except when playing games. And I tend to play high load games like Crysis or COD4 in 1680×1050 on ultra high settings…

Disabling PF gives no visible performance increase generally, for example in some rare occasions you will spare your self waiting to copy large file when Windows suddenly decides to write large chunk of data to PF.
Or after long inactivity without you will not need to wait for windows to restore PF data from disk as it will do instantly from memory.

The most important reason I don’t use PF is because my HDD is a LOT LOT quieter without it.

Anyway gains and risks for disabling PF are minor, so I recommend disabling it and if after 1month (which is generally the time to populate your system with mostly used applications) you don’t experience any problems leave it disabled. In this period save often

Regards..