Windows 7 64 bit system with 16Gb RAM but no paging file?

Questions and Answers : Windows : Windows 7 64 bit system with 16Gb RAM but no paging file?

Author	Message
SirionStig Send message Joined: 9 Oct 02 Posts: 30 Credit: 128,470 RAC: 0	Message 1260877 - Posted: 15 Jul 2012, 22:10:05 UTC
	I have been running this setup without a problem for about 4 weeks. Can anyone tell me factully if this is a mistake? Home premium, all hardware is 64 bit. DDR3 in 4 sticks. Appears to be faster than using having a swap file set. Don't ask why I have 16Gb... ____________
	ID: 1260877 ·

John McLeod VII Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 15 Jul 99 Posts: 22343 Credit: 440,201 RAC: 100	Message 1260918 - Posted: 16 Jul 2012, 0:25:24 UTC - in response to Message 1260877.
	I have been running this setup without a problem for about 4 weeks. Can anyone tell me factully if this is a mistake? Home premium, all hardware is 64 bit. DDR3 in 4 sticks. Appears to be faster than using having a swap file set. Don't ask why I have 16Gb... You only need a swap file if the OS needs to save some memory to the hard disk. If you have sufficient RAM so that all memory operations happen in real RAM, the OS will never create the swap file. The OS will need to save memory to the swap file if more memory is allocated than available on the physical RAM chips. In other words, you probably have more RAM than you actually need. ____________ BOINC WIKI
	ID: 1260918 ·

SirionStig Send message Joined: 9 Oct 02 Posts: 30 Credit: 128,470 RAC: 0	Message 1261105 - Posted: 16 Jul 2012, 13:10:13 UTC - in response to Message 1260918.
	Thank you. ____________
	ID: 1261105 ·

Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 12012 Credit: 19,615,733 RAC: 42,145	Message 1261117 - Posted: 16 Jul 2012, 13:49:12 UTC
	It should be noted though that according to Microsoft's Best Practices, it is highly recommended that you leave the swap file enabled and let Windows dynamically manage its size. In this type of setup, Windows will only create the swap file if it is needed, and is preferred if there's ever an errant process with a memory leak that consumes all RAM. Were this to happen without a swap file, the OS will spew out tons of "Out of Memory" errors and will become very unstable.
	ID: 1261117 ·

SirionStig Send message Joined: 9 Oct 02 Posts: 30 Credit: 128,470 RAC: 0	Message 1261581 - Posted: 17 Jul 2012, 21:27:24 UTC - in response to Message 1261117.
	Thanks for that VT. Can you tell me how likely that overflow is given that I have 16Gb? ____________
	ID: 1261581 ·

John McLeod VII Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 15 Jul 99 Posts: 22343 Credit: 440,201 RAC: 100	Message 1261622 - Posted: 18 Jul 2012, 0:17:09 UTC - in response to Message 1261581.
	Thanks for that VT. Can you tell me how likely that overflow is given that I have 16Gb? It depends on what you run. I routinely run a swapping file that large with 8GB RAM. However, some of the development tools are a bit RAM hungry as is the VM software, ... ____________ BOINC WIKI
	ID: 1261622 ·

Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 12012 Credit: 19,615,733 RAC: 42,145	Message 1261631 - Posted: 18 Jul 2012, 0:32:08 UTC - in response to Message 1261581.
	John is right. It really depends on the software you run and whether that software "springs" a memory leak.
	ID: 1261631 ·

BilBg Send message Joined: 27 May 07 Posts: 2095 Credit: 3,274,787 RAC: 7,846	Message 1261651 - Posted: 18 Jul 2012, 1:49:01 UTC - in response to Message 1261581.
	"how likely" depends on the programmer writing the code. You have to estimate how often programmers forget to release the allocated memory, how much memory was allocated, how often that buggy part of code is executed ... The example (while (malloc(50));) at the end of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak ... will consume all the memory probably in seconds. (especially if the loop is slightly changed to write something in the allocated memory and several instances of the program are run) ____________ - ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
	ID: 1261651 ·

John McLeod VII Volunteer developer Volunteer tester Send message Joined: 15 Jul 99 Posts: 22343 Credit: 440,201 RAC: 100	Message 1261666 - Posted: 18 Jul 2012, 3:13:14 UTC - in response to Message 1261631.
	John is right. It really depends on the software you run and whether that software "springs" a memory leak. It also depends on the basic amount of memory that is required for a particular program. Some applications need a huge amount even without any memory leaks. ____________ BOINC WIKI
	ID: 1261666 ·

Questions and Answers : Windows : Windows 7 64 bit system with 16Gb RAM but no paging file?