16GB of Ram

[Phynaz]

100% wrong. I can only guess that your trolling or just out of date but anyway here is some proof:

How about instead of name calling you actually do a little research?

Windows is designed to have a page file. Windows does more with the page file than just page memory. For example it is the backing store for private memory. Without that backing store ALL private memory is being held in RAM, and you are dropping other pages - such as loaded DLL's - to make room.

That just one reason why a Windows 7 system without a pagefile will be slower than one with.

At the last Windows developer conference during one of the Q/A sessions it was asked if there would come a time when Windows wouldn't need a page file. The answer was "no".

 

[imagoon]

Random thing to note about the swap:

If something does crash, the crash dumps are written there before the next boot of the OS can move them to the dump folders. Disabling swap disables the dump logging.

File caching and the "Ram caching" that Windows is very different. A DLL file cached vs the DLL's image in swap: The dll is just the file, the image is what the DLL builds when it is loaded in to ram and all of the constructors execute. Windows 7 doesn't generally touch the swap unless it is actually out of RAM bar background work where it is copying the pages of background apps to swap while keep the pages in RAM. It does this so it can release the pages quickly since they are already in the page file.

Interesting notes about it here:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

I personally leave it as "let windows manage it" on clients. I manage it some on the servers mostly because I can push the swap file activity off the main data disks in that SAN.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

thanks imagoon. interesting stuff.

I want to know more about pushing swap activity off the main disks. How exactly are you doing that and has it improved performance?

 

[imagoon]

thanks imagoon. interesting stuff.

I want to know more about pushing swap activity off the main disks. How exactly are you doing that and has it improved performance?

In the computer properties where you can choose to set the size of the swap, you can also choose the volume that the swap file is located on. In virtual environments specifically (my case) where you have 20+ machines running on a single server with 10ish sitting on a LUN, windows doing "predictive writes" (mentioned above) can start to consume a decent amount of IOPs. This happens because Windows isn't aware it is sharing disk with 9 other machines so it "idles away" on the disks that are actually busy in other VM's.

I treat it like a virtual database server. I have a small set of disks that I can create an "X:" drive on for all the servers and put their swap there. That way the write IOP load doesn't hit the main storage disks. The same way they recommend to put the database log on a different disk than the database file.

 

[GaryJohnson]

That just one reason why a Windows 7 system without a pagefile will be slower than one with.

Can you reference any benchmarks that support that statement? I think that's pretty central to the issue here and my fervent googling hasn't turned up anything. I did benchmarks with it on and off with everest on my 8GB Win7 system within the last couple of months and I didn't see any conclusive performance difference one way or the other, but that evidence is anecdotal.

 

[Phynaz]

Can you reference any benchmarks that support that statement? I think that's pretty central to the issue here and my fervent googling hasn't turned up anything. I did benchmarks with it on and off with everest on my 8GB Win7 system within the last couple of months and I didn't see any conclusive performance difference one way or the other, but that evidence is anecdotal.

This info comes from the Microsoft Windows blog and Technet. I'm not aware of Microsoft publishing benchmarks.

 

[mtnd3vil]

It sounds like you're trying to find a way to use 16GB when you don't really need 16GB.

Taking proper advantage of a basic quad core desktop with VT-x for virtualization purposes would require exactly this much ram. If he's rocking an Intel chipset that supports 16GB, I'm sure the weakest CPU he could have is a 45nm C2D.