Whitedog
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 9:11 AM
I was talking with my Network guys here at work yesterday and the idea of No SWAP FILE (or Virtual memory if you want to put it that way) "Improves" performance??? Both of these guys are engineers and "claim" they used to run computers like that all the time... as long as it has Enough Memory...
So, given that, I thought about it. If you have 128MB Ram and a swap file of 140megs... IF you double your ram to 256 and DISABLE swap file, wouldn't you effectivly be doing your computer a favor? I mean, memory is 1000 times faster at access time, and has about 50 times the transfer rate!!!
SO.... I got home last night and disabled Virtual memory. I have 256MB Ram running ME.
Everything seemed to work Fine until I tried to play a game (Dues Ex). It started filling my Ram up with gobbs of data and THEN IT STOPPED! "Out of Virtual Memory" error message I got and the game terminated!
Now, are games Stupid enough not to look at windows to SEE that I have it disabled???? I guess STUPID Programming is going to cause me to have to enable it again huh. The game says it will play on 32 MEGS ram!! I HAVE 256 MEGS!!!! ARG!
Wasn't virtual memory designed to give your computer more memory? What if I decided to ADD MORE REAL FUSKING MEMORY INSTEAD OF USING A SLOW A$$ HARD DRIVE FOR MEMORY?????
With memory as cheap as it is now ($115 for 256MB), I'm thinking about expanding to 768MB. (gonna cost me a whopping $250.. HAHAHAHAHA!!! I LOVE IT!)
Am I doing this in vein??? I'd like to be able to Run my system without using the FUSKING hard drive for memory if I could... but if STIPUD program "REQUIRE" you to do this!!! ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!!!!!
So, any of you out there that have played around with this, or better YET! Know anything about this.... POST YOUR .02 please! Thanks
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My spelling is Suck ¨?¨?¨^
Message edited by: Whitedog on 11/03/2000 09:12:54
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Noriaki
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 9:18 AM
<< THEN IT STOPPED! "Out of Virtual Memory" >>
That's why you don't disable Vmem..
<< The game says it will play on 32 MEGS ram!! I HAVE 256 MEGS!!!! ARG! >>
That's assuming you *have* Vmem...do you have any idea how much your disk will thrash running D.Ex on 32MB of RAM?
If you had 768MB you woudln't need a swap file for a while..
But look at it this way:
You start playing D.Ex, and windows will swap out everything else..ICQ, Explorer, TV-Wonder drivers..whatever...so they are still "running" but they aren't using any physical memory and windows will give it all to DeusEx to run with it....then when DeusEx is done and you want Explorer back (your desktop) it will swap it back in...it's just like if you shut it down while you were playing...
Having no Virtual Memory *is* faster than having it...but in reality you get to point where it's just silly..while DeusEx is starting and stopping there will be some swapping...but with 256MB you probably aren't going tosee much if any while the game is going.
I really can't think of a good reason to disable Vmem.
I don't think anything requires virtual memory, Vmem is application transparent, that out of Vmem message comes from windows. A game just sees a 32bit address space and uses it..windows handles where the games data actually goes.
*shrugs* if you are that paranoid about it get 768MB use 384MB and make a 384MB Ramdrive and use that RAMDrive for your Vmem. But even that won't last you forever...
Edit: In case you couldn't tell from my poor sense of humour that last line was sarcasm.
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Yeah! Sweet new Icon. Linux rocks.
Message edited by: Noriaki on 11/03/2000 09:41:07
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Xcrown
Junior Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 9:27 AM
Yeah, diddo. Basically, you would need alot of physical RAM to be able to run a computer with the swap file disabled succesfully. And even then, you would not be able to run many programs at one time.
Xcrown
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Hey, remember that....oh wait....I forgot.
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Mutilator
Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 9:33 AM
A lot of games won't even start if you don't have virtual memory enabled... and most of the time if your computer is good enough you wouldn't notice much if any disk thrashing anyway except maybe during level changes.
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lnguyen
Diamond Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 9:35 AM
Heh, deus ex seems to be the wrong example here, that thing hits the disk HARD.
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-lnguyen aka lnx227
Both my usernames start w/ a lowercase 'L'
My Plexicase
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Whitedog
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 10:03 AM
and make a 384MB Ramdrive and use that RAMDrive for your Vmem
uhmmm, isn't ramdrive limited to 32 megs? that's what I thought. If not, How then?
I am going to put 768 megs in my computer no matter... memory is just too cheap. It might be somewhat of a waste, but it will be fun to play with.
I think Vmem is just another one of MS blunders...
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My spelling is Suck ¨?¨?¨^
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br0wn
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 10:15 AM
What is virtual memory ? Why disabling vmem will improve performance assuming
that you have enough physical memory ?
Virtual memory is a technique employed by Operating System to manage
several execution program although they may not completely in the memory.
Before Virtual memory was discovered, to execute a program, the whole
program has to be loaded into the physical memory, thus this create a limit for
programmers because they have to be concern over memory availibility.
Now this is 1 program, imagine if you want to run several program simultenously,
like running Win2K (or any OS), games, and a lot of background processes, without
vmem, you won't be able to run all of these in the same time.
Vmem solved the above problem, by loading just part of the program that needed
to be accessed in the memory, and when other parts of the program that are not
in the memory is needed, they will be load (swap) into the memory.
The idea works like caching although they serve different purposes.
Now, you can see how vmem can damage performance, because it requires a lot
of swapping from hard drive to memory, but without vmem you won't be able
as many applications as you would have.
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http://heatware.elitehardware.com/list.shtml?action=search&option=br0wn
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Whitedog
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 10:36 AM
OK, I know what VMEM is and how it's used... pretty much. I just thought Windows would be (and it should be) smart enough to say "Hey, this computer has a LOT of memory, lets allocate it so that we don't have to use the hard drive at all!"
But, I guess it's sad to say that's not the case. Thank you Microsh1t.
The thought of having a Ram disk and using it crossed my mind, but as I said in a below post I thought ramdrive.sys was limited to 32 megs.. Does anyone know of anyway to create a Ram Drive any bigger? Let me know.
I'm just trying to be a little inovative here with this if you can understand that.
Brings back the old days when I had an Amiga. I had 9 megs memory in it. I used to load my games into RAM DISK and play them entirely from RAM. It was AWESOME!
The old days of "WOW! I have 128MB RAM!" is Over! Memory is so Dirt cheap... I'm going for the WOW! again. 768!
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My spelling is Suck ¨?¨?¨^
Message edited by: Whitedog on 11/03/2000 10:38:31
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Need4Speed
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 11:05 AM
There is an very simple solution for this problem....
Here is what windows does in normal mode, it uses some ram and BEFORE IT RUNS OUT OF RAM, IT STARTS USING THE SWAP FILE. This is bad because the swap is slower. What you want, is to use all the ram first, then use the swap. But how do u tell windows to use all the ram first without turning of the swap? Easy...open your system.ini file and add the follwing under the [386enh] section
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
Leave the swap file settings at auto, ie let windows take care of it. This switch will ensure that all the ram is used before using the swap...enjoy
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"I told my dad I stopped raisin' hell, and he called me a quitter."
Eve/weekend:
lincoln@rochester.rr.com
Day/work:
patlin@parlec.com
ICQ #: 13673275
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Whitedog
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 11:16 AM
Oh Joy! So, in other words, if I have a GOBB of memory, I won't have to worry about my hard drive ever being used for memory. Cool. Tanks.
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My spelling is Suck ¨?¨?¨^
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Celstar
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 11:19 AM
Need4Speed, how much performance increase do you get from that?
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rc5 stats
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Noriaki
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 11:28 AM
Oh yeah Need4Speed's got a good idea there...
I didn't know what the conservativeswapusage tag did...but if it's that then that's a great thing to use that should help you out enormously with disk use.
The 384MB RAMdrive was a joke..you see the company I work for has several AS/400s...the main production machine has more RAM than the other production machine has disk, so my group (in charge of the big one) makes fun the poor little group all the time about RAM disks, so the RAM disk quip just rolled right out I didn't mean it tho.
But if need4speed is right, then hell I'm doing the same thing I'll only have 384MB not 768, but still 384 is enough to have very little swap usage.
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Yeah! Sweet new Icon. Linux rocks.
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Whitedog
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 11:38 AM
HEY!!! IT WORKS!!! I took a Win98 machine here at work win 128MB RAM and did this. Rebooted and C:\Windows\win386.swp is ZERO KB!! I opened up like 15 web sessions of IE and it only was using 4MB swap. I can live with that!
THANKS Need4Speed!
The 384MB RAMdrive was a joke.. Damn! I was hoping I could have a Ram Drive that big!
OK, now. one more question. DOES THIS WORK WITH NT/2000????
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My spelling is Suck ¨?¨?¨^
Message edited by: Whitedog on 11/03/2000 11:39:20
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Need4Speed
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 11:47 AM
Glad it worked for you...it certainly adds some zip to win98, or at least it seems more responsive...not sure if it works with nt/2000, but i dont think it would. not sure if win2k even has a system.ini
someone try and let me know
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"I told my dad I stopped raisin' hell, and he called me a quitter."
Eve/weekend:
lincoln@rochester.rr.com
Day/work:
patlin@parlec.com
ICQ #: 13673275
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Whitedog
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 1:51 PM
Well, my WIN2000 machine here at work has 256megs ram. Yes, it does have a system.ini with a section [386enh]
I used to have a static page file of 400megs (prevents fragmentation).
I added the line to my system.ini and changed Page File minimum/maximum to 2/400
I rebooted and everything is working Great! I got a funny message at bootup about the page file being small, but I think it was just Windows going "Uh, that 2 meg page file ya got there is aweful small there bud"
I've opened up my usual GOBBS of apps I run (NWADMIN, 3 browsers, Outlook98, Usermngr, Exchange ADmin, a few client/server apps written in Powerbuilder, 3 or 4 excel spreadsheets...) I went and checked my page file and it's only 6 megs. So, the trick seems to be working under Win2000 too. Although Task manager shows 150 megs of memory being used (120 physical and 30 kernel) and roughly 100 megs free, everything is working Sweet! I believe that if I were to use up that other 100 megs, Windows would start using page file.
So, to conclude, the proceedure DOES work under Win2000 too. My system is using PHYSICAL memory purely!
If anyone out there does have extra cash laying around, I do recommend splurging and Upgrading your computer to 256 megs of ram (or 768 like I am going to at home) and configure like we've been talking about.
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My spelling is Suck ¨?¨?¨^
Message edited by: Whitedog on 11/03/2000 13:54:00
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Ben
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 3:43 PM
Anyone try this in NT?
My system.ini file says "for 16-bit apps" at the top. Does that mean the settings are for 16-bit applications only?
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Cknyc
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 4:14 PM
I got the same results here whitedog. Using win2k and with 100 megs or memory being used only 5 is in the pagefile. Now I will need to upgrade to 512 from 256.
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We are what gives our lives significance, It is not pre-established for us, but it is some thing which we ourselves are responsible for. - J.P.Sartre
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LocutusX
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 5:46 PM
I'm surprised it worked in NT/2000. The system.ini for those operating systems is supposed to be for compatibility purposes only (i.e. when running 16-bit Windows apps).
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My other computer is a Cray.
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Spoooon
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 6:11 PM
I've got 256megs of ram in my Win2000 computer. My pagefile size is 100megs max/min and I haven't run into any problems yet.
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K7550@770
My SETI Stats
My RC5 Stats
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lowtech
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 6:30 PM
RamDrive - a 75k program let you config up to a max of 2GB physical ram
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"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
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Moonbender
Member Date Posted: Nov/03/2000 8:51 PM
I just added the line, but I doubt it will be any good on my Win2k machine with 96 megs (now don't tell me I ought to get more RAM - it's not that I don't wanna ...).
Anyways, there are quite a lot of funny uses to the ramdrive. A computer magazine configured a computer to create a 300 megs or so ramdisk during booting, and to copy a directory from disk to it. That DIR contained a complete installation of Win95 (mind you, that's less than 200 megs!), and additionally, parts of MS Office.
After copying the computer boots from the RAM disk, in mere seconds. The Office apps of course, started in seconds, too. Kinda cool.
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// "Real life? Never heard of it ... is it worth downloading?"
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WoundedWallet
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/04/2000 3:29 AM
Just to add one more piece of info to this subject.
If for some reason you use all your RAM, W2k goes nicely into your HD and enlarges the pagefile.
But do not worry if you notice that your pagefile stays that large aftr you finish whatever is that you were doing. Cause W2k will still use your physical memory before going into that enlarged pagefile.
I did the test and got these results. And now I got a pretty good excuse to get 3 256MB chips for my machine.
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"If aliens landed now and asked you to take them to your leader, we'd be in trouble."
Smartass British Comedian.
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The_good_guy
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/04/2000 3:34 AM
tried it in 98SE. Boot seemed faster.. So far I havent maxed it.
My swap is set at a seperate drive and its set for 128MB to 384MB. I am going to change it to 256 - 256 and see what happens.
TGG
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"To err is human, to blame it on others is Politics"
AOL IM: "ManjulBose"
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Ben
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/04/2000 3:45 AM
Too bad that RamDrive program is a 16-bit application.
<< I'm surprised it worked in NT/2000. The system.ini for those operating systems is supposed to be for compatibility purposes only (i.e. when running 16-bit Windows apps). >>
Ya, that's what I thought too.
Message edited by: Ben on 11/04/2000 03:47:04
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WoundedWallet
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/04/2000 5:15 AM
The_good_guy, since you have it on a separate drive like me, you won't have to worry about fragmentation. So you don't need to have a high minimum.
WW
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"If aliens landed now and asked you to take them to your leader, we'd be in trouble."
Smartass British Comedian.
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Whitedog
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/06/2000 2:31 PM
After playing with this all weekend, I've come to conclude that Win2k manages your memory quite well without this line. In fact, I don't think it affects it at all (You guys are right about that only being for 16-bit crap).
However, setting your pagefile to a low number only causes windows to tell you "it had to increase it" when it needed to.
Win9x (Me) on the other hand benifits from these setting Quite Well! I pumped up my computer at home running WinMe with 384megs ram, added the line in system.ini and DISABLED virtual memory! I ran the crap out of Everything all weekend long and never had Any problems! System ran GREAT! Everything loaded fast! Games that normally Thrashed the hard drive for swapping Never hickuped once!
I recommend Anyone that runs 9x upgrade Memory and Disable swap file!
Win2k users... well, take it from me, if you have 256+ megs memory, the ABSOLUTE largest you need for pagefile is 50megs. I reduced minimum to 2 megs... loaded about 12 (large) programs, opened 65megs in Excel files, 120megs in powerpoint files, 30megs in Photoshop files...etc... and my pagefile only grew to 44 megs...
Have fun all!
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My spelling is Suck ¨?¨?¨^
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Zenmervolt
Member Date Posted: Nov/06/2000 5:34 PM
At the very least, you should switch to a fixed size swap file. The standard variable size swap file forces Windows to constantly recalculate the disk space needed and alter the swap file size as well. Fixed size swap files eliminate the effort that Windows puts into claculating the size and altering it, though they don't affect the swapping in and out of physical memory much. Still I noticed a slight performance increase after setting the swap file on my K6-II 500MHz to 1024MB. Abmittedly it helps that I have a 7200RPM drive hooked up but it still faster than the same HDD with a variable swap file. Probably got the noticable increase only because of that computer's small amount of RAM though (64MB).
Aaron Meyer
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Coming Sometime in the Future:
IBM ThinkPad A21p
PIII 850MHz
256MB 100MHz SDRAM
32GB 5400RPM HDD
16MB ATI Rage Mobility 128
1600x1200 15" TFT Display
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PCAddict
Platinum Member Date Posted: Nov/06/2000 8:34 PM
Adding that line seemed to make my system a bit pepper as well. Good tip.
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For the second time in my lifetime, a Chicago politician named Daley is trying to steal a presidential election. - Sen. Robert F. Bennett
My RC5 Stats
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The_good_guy
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/06/2000 8:43 PM
WoundedWallet
I did that.. but was not satisfied at 256-256 so I went 2 - 128. I am happy. the system is running smooth.
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"To err is human, to blame it on others is Politics"
AOL IM: "ManjulBose"
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WoundedWallet
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/07/2000 3:08 AM
Whitedog, "the ABSOLUTE largest you need for pagefile is 50megs".
So that you know that some people may need more than that. I have 384 and I managed to get my pagefile to over 200MB by working on two movies with Flash.
But I have to admit that I haven't noticed much change regarding speed with this change. Besides I have that stupid warning everytime I boot. So this edit may not be worthwhile in w2k like you said. I'll have to time it to see if I have any improvement so far.
The_good_guy, unless you need the space on your drive I think that you should have your maximum at least the same size as your RAM. I read somewhere that you need that space for memory dump in case of a crash. I have this feeling that you have 256MB of RAM, that's why I'm saying this.
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"If aliens landed now and asked you to take them to your leader, we'd be in trouble."
Smartass British Comedian.
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Linh
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/07/2000 4:12 AM
hmm, somehow didn't see the other posts
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Drill, fill, and bill
Message edited by: Linh on 11/07/2000 04:15:46
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osage
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/07/2000 7:52 PM
Pardon my ignorance, but where exactly do I find this system ini. file?
Do you do this with regedit or what? give me a hint
thanks
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even a blind hog will find an acorn from time to time
Message edited by: osage on 11/10/2000 11:20:23
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Ben
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/07/2000 8:22 PM
It's the system.ini file.
Just do a file find for "system.ini".
It's located in the Windows directory.
You can edit the file using notepad.
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osage
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/07/2000 8:37 PM
Thank you sir
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even a blind hog will find an acorn from time to time
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Sir Fredrick
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/07/2000 9:31 PM
The line apparently does not work in Win2k, as it still hits the swapfile before it has run out of physical memory.
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LocutusX
Golden Member Date Posted: Nov/07/2000 10:49 PM
Win2K will ALWAYS use the pagefile - that is how it's DESIGNED.
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My other computer is a Cray.
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WoundedWallet
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/08/2000 1:45 AM
<< The line apparently does not work in Win2k, >>
excuse me fellas but I beg to differ. I wen through 380MB of RAM before my pagefile started increasing.
It is true that w2k asked for 5MB after boot. And it is also true that I still had near 5MB left of physical RAM when the pagefile got active. But I consider 5MB too small of an amount to be counted.
So it does work in W2k, but I haven't seen any noticeable improvement. Maybe if do a test with and without that line I could say for sure what happens. But I don't feel like rebboting right now, I may fall asleep waiting for it
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"If aliens landed now and asked you to take them to your leader, we'd be in trouble."
Smartass British Comedian.
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RayEarth
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/16/2000 2:30 PM
since adding that line under the 386enh section tells windows to use all physical memory 1st before swicthing to virtual mem. would installing one of those memory managing programs like memturbo 2.0 help, since it's job is to free up memory?
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jushua
Junior Member Date Posted: Nov/17/2000 11:58 AM
<< added the line in system.ini and DISABLED virtual memory >>
Wouldn't it be useless to add the line if you also disable the virtual memory?
I mean if you disable VM why should you then tell Windows to use VM conservatively.
I've tried adding the line with VM both enabled and disabled with "only" 256 mb ram and it actually ran ok with VM disabled. But in the end I don't think it's wise to run without VM with only 256 mb?? I think I'll go back to the added line and VM enabled. What do you guys think?
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subhuman
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/17/2000 4:57 PM
I always set my Swap File Min = Swap File Max. This avoids swap file resizing and hard disk thrashing. I usually use values that are twice the amount of my ram plus a tiny bit, so 600megs Min/Max swap for 256megs ram. this works really good, and has avoided glitches when recording many channels of full quality audio to my hard disk (ie: recording sessions).
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--- - - -
ASUS CUSL2 // Piii700 @ 1008MHz / 144 / 1.8 / Orb / 256PC133 Mushkin
Plextor 12/10/32 / Pioneer 16x Slot DVD
21" P810 Viewsonic
Message edited by: subhuman on 11/18/2000 15:13:07
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WoundedWallet
Senior Member Date Posted: Nov/18/2000 4:34 AM
jushua, leave your VM enabled. It won't hurt and can only do good.
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"If aliens landed now and asked you to take them to your leader, we'd be in trouble."
Smartass British Comedian.
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