Help! Virtual Memory setting
Min
I bought a second HDD and added more memory to my computer recently. Since
I'm doing a lot of graphics and video editing, I though it wouldn't hurt to
invest in memory, and now I have 384MB RAM.
I once heard that it's better to locate SWAP file on the front part of the
second drive and to set SWAP file size 3 times of the memory size. So I
partitioned my second HDD in order to move SWAP file, and changed the
setting in System/Performance/Virtual Memory to "Let me specify my own
virtual memory settings."
Now, here's my question.
It seem to me that Windows98 refuses to take maximum(and minimum) SWAP file
size greater than 1,000MB. Is there a limit to this setting? Or (as usual)
am I doing something wrong? If so, what would you suggest? What would be
the best setting?
Thank you for your help!
Lee Chapelle
that a nominal minumum setting approximately equal to your typical swapfile
size may improve performance. I think this is very dependant on your own
unique needs.
--
Lee
MS MVP
l...@mvps.org
return email address altered
to reduce spam
Min <ninja...@csi.com> wrote in message
news:71jh7g$2...@dfw-ixnews4.ix.netcom.com...
Ovidiu Popa
The ideea of having a swap file three time the size of the memory is wrong.
Simplified, the virtual memory is a substitute of RAM - so the more RAM you
have, the less swap space you need.
Let windows manage the swap size. IMO it's the best way.
Ovidiu Popa
MS-MVP (DTS)
Min wrote in message <71jh7g$2...@dfw-ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>...
Thorsten Matzner
>I bought a second HDD and added more memory to my computer recently. Since
>I'm doing a lot of graphics and video editing, I though it wouldn't hurt to
>invest in memory, and now I have 384MB RAM.
>I once heard that it's better to locate SWAP file on the front part of the
>second drive and to set SWAP file size 3 times of the memory size. So I
>partitioned my second HDD in order to move SWAP file, and changed the
>setting in System/Performance/Virtual Memory to "Let me specify my own
>virtual memory settings."
>Now, here's my question.
>It seem to me that Windows98 refuses to take maximum(and minimum) SWAP file
>size greater than 1,000MB. Is there a limit to this setting? Or (as usual)
>am I doing something wrong? If so, what would you suggest? What would be
>the best setting?
There is no "best setting". Nor should you need 3*384MB swapfile. Make
Windows managing the swapfile automatically. Placing the SF in front
of a disk may speed up the system a bit, but I do not think, that it
is worth the time to set this up on your system.
--
(tm)
Big Bob
swapfile it needs than I am. I use large graphics with 128 mb RAM, and I
don't interfere with any swapfile settings. I don't remember ever crashing
out of Photoshop despite having files and applications running all over the
place.
Part of the rationale for separate drives used to be avoiding fragmentation,
but with Win98 it's to your advantage to defrag regularly, because it
optimizes the placement of your files for most efficient use. It sure
doesn't seem like it would hurt anything to use a separate drive, but it may
not help either.
Big Bob
Min wrote in message <71jh7g$2...@dfw-ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>...
>Hello,
>I bought a second HDD and added more memory to my computer recently. Since
>I'm doing a lot of graphics and video editing, I though it wouldn't hurt to
>invest in memory, and now I have 384MB RAM.
>I once heard that it's better to locate SWAP file on the front part of the
>second drive and to set SWAP file size 3 times of the memory size. So I
>partitioned my second HDD in order to move SWAP file, and changed the
>setting in System/Performance/Virtual Memory to "Let me specify my own
>virtual memory settings."
>Now, here's my question.
>It seem to me that Windows98 refuses to take maximum(and minimum) SWAP file
>size greater than 1,000MB. Is there a limit to this setting? Or (as
usual)
>am I doing something wrong? If so, what would you suggest? What would be
>the best setting?
John Sheehy
>From what I've seen, Windows is far more capable of determining what size
>swapfile it needs than I am. I use large graphics with 128 mb RAM, and I
>don't interfere with any swapfile settings. I don't remember ever crashing
>out of Photoshop despite having files and applications running all over the
>place.
A word of note: PhotoShop completely bypasses Windows' VM subsystem.
It only uses locked ram and it's own virtual memory scheme on a drive of
your choosing (look in preferences), optimized for it's graphics
routines.
>Part of the rationale for separate drives used to be avoiding fragmentation,
>but with Win98 it's to your advantage to defrag regularly, because it
>optimizes the placement of your files for most efficient use. It sure
>doesn't seem like it would hurt anything to use a separate drive, but it may
>not help either.
If the secondary drive is the same speed or faster than the one C: is
on, it can never hurt, and almost always helps, especially if it's on a
different controller.
If the secondary drive is slower, it all depends on what else is being
accessed at the same time as the swapfile. If the swapfile is being
accessed, and nothing else, then obviously the best place is the fastest
part of the fastest drive. If other disk activities are occuring at the
same time, *any* disk is more likely a better place, because accessing
two files on the same drive is always slower than even the slowest HDs.
All the performance gains of faster HDs are lost when accessing more
than one file at a time on a drive.
Here are some hard facts to demonstrate this concept. I have 3 HDs on
my system. Here are their stats, including maximum transfer speed of a
contiguous file:
Size Make Mode Controller Fastest Partition
11.5 G Maxtor UDMA Prim Mast C: 13 MB/s (F: is about 11 MB/s)
2.0 G Maxtor PIO4 Prim Slav G: 4.6 MB/s
3.1 G WD PIO4 Seco Mast J: 6.5 MB/s
The speeds above are based on reading and writing contiguous 10 meg
files.
If I read/write *two* 10 meg files at the same time, one right after the
other in contiguous space on the C: partition, the read speeds drop to
2.44 MB/s each, totalling 4.88 MB/s, and writes of 6.5 MB/s, totalling
13 MB/s. I repeated the benchmark with other combinations of these 2
file locations and tabulated the results:
Read Write Total
File1 File2 File1 File2 Read Write
C: C: 2.44 2.44 6.50 6.50 4.88 13.00
C: F: 1.24 1.25 3.83 3.66 2.49 7.49
C: G: 4.57 4.60 4.53 4.42 9.17 8.95
C: J: 13.02 6.64 13.02 4.68 19.66 17.70
Observations:
1) Two drives accessed at the same time on the same contoller channel
each run at the speed of the lower.
2) There is no significant contention while accessing two drives on
different controllers at the same time.
3) The worst performance occurs when *reading* 2 files on the same
drive in distant partitions (writing them is not as bad).
4) The second worst is reading two files right next to each other
(writing them incurs no loss).
5) Writing never seems to be hit as hard as reading during simultaneous
accesses.
--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>>< ><<>
John P Sheehy <jsh...@ix.netcom.com>
><<> <>>< <>>< ><<> <>>< ><<> ><<> <>><
Big Bob
nothing better than actual tests to find out the real answer, but they are
time consuming. I did a similar thing awhile back with RAM over 64 MB on a
TX and VX chipset, and found out basically...the more, the better, L2
caching or not.
Now, here's one: At work I have a dual-boot machine with Win98 and NT5,
both FAT32, on separate drives/controllers. Do I:
Put the 98 swapfile on the NT5 drive, and the NT5 swapfile on the 98 drive?
If so will Win98, when I defrag, put the NT5 swapfile in a lousy place on
the drive, because it doesn't use it? How about when I defrag with NT5?
I really don't expect an answer, just thought I'd confuse things a little.
<g>
Big Bob
John Sheehy wrote in message <36452d2e...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>...
John Sheehy
>Now, here's one: At work I have a dual-boot machine with Win98 and NT5,
>both FAT32, on separate drives/controllers. Do I:
>Put the 98 swapfile on the NT5 drive, and the NT5 swapfile on the 98 drive?
>If so will Win98, when I defrag, put the NT5 swapfile in a lousy place on
>the drive, because it doesn't use it? How about when I defrag with NT5?
>I really don't expect an answer, just thought I'd confuse things a little.
I have 3 drives, and a few different OSes, and I keep the swapfiles on
their own partitions. They only get defragged if I tell them to.
Bill Starbuck
Some programs refuse even to run unless a swapfile exists. Go to
Device Manager and click on the Performance tab and then on the
Virtual Memory button. You should see: "Let Windows manage my virtual
memory settings."
Bill Starbuck (MVP)
To find out about Microsoft's MVP program, go to
support.microsoft.com and click on "Newsgroups" in
the menu on the left.
Ali
disabled and now have it set the same for Win98. I find for myself that I do
not need a Virtual Memory drive set and Windows runs much more smoothly since it
uses memory more instead of the hard drive. When I have Virtual Memory enabled
with Windows managing it, it likes to save too much to the swap drive cranking
it away but not so when disabled and I absolutely have no problems with it
having it on disabled, it in fact is more stable without it enabled! For my
system anyway, others may vary with different results. I've been running it
this way for about 3 years now.
Ali.
Kyle Bryant
--
--Kyle.
Ali <al...@writeme.com> wrote in message 3648C008...@writeme.com...
John Sheehy
>I've been running 97 Megs of memory with Win95 with NO Virtual Memory, have it
>disabled and now have it set the same for Win98. I find for myself that I do
>not need a Virtual Memory drive set and Windows runs much more smoothly since it
>uses memory more instead of the hard drive. When I have Virtual Memory enabled
>with Windows managing it, it likes to save too much to the swap drive cranking
>it away
I've never had my Win98 system slow down due to swapping, until the
vcache was already shrunk pretty small; a point that I wouldn't have
gotten to because of "not enough memory" messages, at an earlier point
in time. I have seen no evidence that Win98 swaps when it doesn't need
to. Win95 was another story, if you left the vcache dynamic.
>but not so when disabled and I absolutely have no problems with it
>having it on disabled, it in fact is more stable without it enabled! For my
>system anyway, others may vary with different results. I've been running it
>this way for about 3 years now.
What exactly do you do with your computer? 97 megs of total allocatable
memory is miniscule for anyone doing more than playing solitaire or
designing icons in MSPaint.
If you have the swapfile turned off, you can *not* use all of your ram.
A swapfile allows you to do more on your computer, without swapping,
than you could possibly do at all with the swapfile turned off.
Zeus
John Sheehy wrote:
> Ali <al...@writeme.com> writes:
>
> >I've been running 97 Megs of memory with Win95 with NO Virtual Memory, have it
> >disabled and now have it set the same for Win98. I find for myself that I do
> >not need a Virtual Memory drive set and Windows runs much more smoothly since it
> >uses memory more instead of the hard drive. When I have Virtual Memory enabled
> >with Windows managing it, it likes to save too much to the swap drive cranking
> >it away
>
> I've never had my Win98 system slow down due to swapping, until the
> vcache was already shrunk pretty small; a point that I wouldn't have
> gotten to because of "not enough memory" messages, at an earlier point
> in time. I have seen no evidence that Win98 swaps when it doesn't need
> to. Win95 was another story, if you left the vcache dynamic.
>
Definition of slowdown.. According to me a slowdown is when something suddenly goes
noticably slower. Swapping might not always be noticable, but still it requires some
cpu power. Diskwriting/reading is always slower than reading/writing to ram, no
matter what you do with you computer. The issue here, is how to prevent windows from
doing unnesseray swapping, as we know it does. I have 128MB ram. I know that 128MB is
more than enough to hold windows, photoshop and netscape running at the same time
without the need for swapping, But stilll, swapping is occuring.
John Sheehy
>Definition of slowdown.. According to me a slowdown is when something suddenly goes
>noticably slower. Swapping might not always be noticable, but still it requires some
>cpu power. Diskwriting/reading is always slower than reading/writing to ram, no
>matter what you do with you computer. The issue here, is how to prevent windows from
>doing unnesseray swapping, as we know it does.
No, I *don't* know that. I have *not* seen what you are describing.
There is no swapping on my system until the vcache has gotten very
small, in Win98. I do not consider "swapfile in use" to be swapping.
Many apps store things in the swapfile intentionally, for one reason or
another. That is not "swapping"; it is "using the swapfile". Swapping
is when needed code or data is in the swapfile, and must be swapped in,
or something has to be swapped out to make room for something in RAM.
>I have 128MB ram. I know that 128MB is
>more than enough to hold windows, photoshop and netscape running at the same time
>without the need for swapping, But stilll, swapping is occuring.
Photoshop is in a league of it's own. It locks whatever ram it gets
access to, and duplicates it in it's own swapfile.