SurClaro Flight Simulator Resources

Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 10:52 pm Post subject: RAM vs PAGE FILE

I have been thinking about Flight Sim and how Ram is generally a wonderful thing. the more RAM you have the smoother it is. Well, being that I have ALL of my FS9 and FSX and about 5 other games on an external hard drive, would boosting the PAGE FILE for a hard drive possibly give a "ram" boost?? I know that some things should just not be messed with, but I was just wondering. The page file of a drive causes part of a drive to be used as RAM, so if i increase the page file of C:\ being that FS9 / X is being read from E:\ then wouldnt the sim be smoother???

just a ponder to ponder over....

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 1:02 am Post subject:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555223

Enjoy

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:48 am Post subject:

Test is on Friday, so make sure you study it good.

I actually read the thing 3 times. When blood started coming out of my eyes on the third reading, I had to stop.

I want to hit the guy that writes this stuff, and shake the hand of anybody that understands it.

RD

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 10:03 pm Post subject:

RD:

I understand most of what he is saying. However, I had to attend a week long class presented by IBM on "Queing Theory" in order to understand what he is saying.

Unfortunately, I am getting ready to go out the door to attend our weekly Civil Air Patrol Meeting which is why I can't give you a long explanation.

There are two major issues here:

1. If there is no other information available, the normal recommendation of 1.5 times the amount of RAM in the computer is a good place to start. Whenever you set a fixed number for Virtual Memory, make sure that you tell the system that you are overriding the defaults. Therefore, you should set the Minimum and Maximum values at 1.5 times your RAM.

2. Every computer has to have a "Bottleneck". If you eliminate one bottleneck then something else will move to the top of the list. Because Virual Memory requires addional Disk I/Os, this means that your hard drive will have to take on additional load. Cool

Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:40 am Post subject:

Sorry about that RD, LOL

I copied a passage from that page, one which I think is most relevant to the concern:
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Pagefile

RAM is a limited resource, whereas virtual memory is, for most practical purposes, unlimited. There can be a large number of processes each with its own 2 GB of private virtual address space. When the memory in use by all the existing processes exceeds the amount of RAM available, the operating system will move pages (4 KB pieces) of one or more virtual address spaces to the computer’s hard disk, thus freeing that RAM frame for other uses. In Windows systems, these “paged out” pages are stored in one or more files called pagefile.sys in the root of a partition. There can be one such file in each disk partition. The location and size of the page file is configured in SystemProperties, Advanced, Performance (click the Settings button).

A frequently asked question is how big should I make the pagefile? There is no single answer to this question, because it depends on the amount of installed RAM and how much virtual memory that workload requires. If there is no other information available, the normal recommendation of 1.5 times the amount of RAM in the computer is a good place to start. On server systems, a common objective is to have enough RAM so that there is never a shortage and the pagefile is essentially, not used. On these systems, having a really large pagefile may serve no useful purpose. On the other hand, disk space is usually plentiful, so having a large pagefile (e.g. 1.5 times the installed RAM) does not cause a problem and eliminates the need to fuss over how large to make it.