Increase your virtual memory!

[Gunny Highway]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

The best way to run BF2 is to have no paging file at all. The problem here is if you alow windows to use your hard drive to use hard drive space in the place of physical ram then it will do so even when not warrented. If you have enough memory lets say 1.5GB or more you can go to the virtual memory settings as outlined above and turn off the paging file for good. Now you will never have the hard drive cuttinging in during gameplay.

I turned my paging file off after i obtained my 2GB of twinX and since then i never get any stuttering during gameplay.

Turning the page file off, will actually make you use more physical RAM.

Windows uses what is called Virtual Memory. With a page file VM = RAM + PF, e.g. 2GB RAM + 3 GB PF. Resources that aren't needed can be swapped out to PF instead of staying in RAM.
Now consider same system where there's no PF. Then VM = RAM. This means that what could be put to PF before (because it isnt used), now HAS to stay in RAM, and thus using more RAM than before.

The page file should always, be larger than your amount of physical RAM. If it isn't you actually make memory handling worse in Windows, as it needs the space in PF to manoeuver with.

Sources:

http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/virtualmemory.htm

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482/

links found on this site:
http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks5.htm where it is also stated:

1. The average user is best served by LEAVING THE PAGE FILE ALONE. XP does an excellent job of managing the page file settings for most people.

2. For 99.999% of the configurations on the planet you need a page file. XP itself wants one and a number of programs out there do too. (Please don’t email me to argue this, I won’t respond. Find a forum to argue about it.)

3. The recommendations below are not designed to give you the highest scores on a synthetic benchmark but to give you the best overall performance for your system (including stability). The size of hard drives today are huge and making the page file a little larger than it "needs" to be hurts nothing and you’re covered if you’re ever doing something that requires more.

[vidh]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

Best pratice is to have the page file on the same drive where window is AND one on another drive. The one on the seperate drive should be on a small partition for it only, and format this partition using FAT32, as it is faster for small partitions.
The size of page file should always be larger than your physical RAM size. Look here option B on this site:
http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks5.htm

Ok, thanks for the info Gunny, I'll try that :)

[Gunny Highway]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

So, I have 1 gb RAM, how much do you recommend me to use for the paging file?

1.5 GB IMO, look in posts above.

[{USI}_DirTyDeeDs]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

Help me out guys....I'm anxious to talke any advice to speed up gameplay....what Virtual Mem and Pagefile settings should I use? Here is my system.

AMD 3200+ 2.2 ghz
Powercolor x800 GTO 128 mb
1.5 Kingston KVR

1500 mb of ram???
I recommend 500mb pagefile, but only based on my experience and not professional knowledge.

but be sure to :

disable pagefile
reboot
run defrag
reboot
set pagefile
reboot
play

[vidh]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

1.5 GB IMO, look in posts above.

Yea I read that, see above post aswell

[Xanthias]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

Help me out guys....I'm anxious to talke any advice to speed up gameplay....what Virtual Mem and Pagefile settings should I use? Here is my system.

AMD 3200+ 2.2 ghz
Powercolor x800 GTO 128 mb
1.5 Kingston KVR

I think your processor is a good one from what I've heard. Plus, the slight additional processing power you would gain isn't worth the cost at this point.

I think your video card is good, but not the best. See how it compares to the ones in the following charts... Toms Hardware has a great review of the good ones side-by-side. (This one is for PCI-Express cards: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/...ii/page18.html) (This one is AGP cards from last summer:http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/07/...vii/page4.html and this is the comparison with the new 7800GS: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/...uy/page11.html)
Whichever you choose, don't spend less than $300 if you want a REALLY good card. I got the 7800GS myself and the thing is smooth like velvet!
Also, here's a review from 11/2005 on YOUR card...http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/28/don/

Then, I would up your RAM to at least 2 Gigs. This will be a HUGE increase in performance. I'm about to up mine an additional Gig from 2 to 3. My last Gig will come in a couple months.

[Gunny Highway]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

Everyone who is playing/working without a pagefile, knows that the above is not true.

Ppl that WORK with Windows professinally and know what Virtual Memory and how it correlates to RAM and page files and how Windows uses it, would never turn the page file off.
You don't see any production servers in companies that turn it off for performance. The only reason to turn it off, temporarily, is in the case where you have to free up hard drive space quickly. Explained in post above too.

The turning-off-the-page-file "tweaks", are just like the numorous registry tweaks that are said to work wonders for performance. Fact is that most of them don't work in XP and never have. Ppl just fall for the placebo effect and want their system to be faster and think it is.

Yea I read that, see above post aswell

I see the post here as threaded and not in linear mode, so didn't notice I replied to the same thing again.. my bad :laugh:

[Painl3ss.NL]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

The turning-off-the-page-file "tweaks", are just like the numorous registry tweaks that are said to work wonders for performance. Fact is that most of them don't work in XP and never have. Ppl just fall for the placebo effect and want their system to be faster and think it is.

Although I agree with most of your recommendations and explanation of the pagefile, I'm not convinced that turning the pagefile off does not improve memory performance.

When you run XP it seems to always use the pagefile (for inactive processes) ) EVEN if it could have kept everything in RAM. This means that it wrote to the pagefile and has to read it out again if you make those processes active again. If you do not have a pagefile, you force XP to keep everything in RAM.
That said, I think the advantage of not having a pagefile is more in faster swapping between processes/alt-tabbing then in actual better framerates.

[{USI}_DirTyDeeDs]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

I measured my computer against the recommended specs and this is how it stacks up :hmm:

[_SilentXScope_]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

haha me too

Need more ram and it should pass recommended. seeing as i only have 512

[NAK[n00gz]Wolf]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

lol @ n00bs and their xp "tweaks" that dont do a thing...
i'll take the red pill..

[SgtMattBaker]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

noob question ... how do u do that ? the thing that dirtydeeds and nighthawk are doing

[Gunny Highway]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

noob question ... how do u do that ? the thing that dirtydeeds and nighthawk are doing

By reading the sticky threads :
"Can I run BF2, guys?" - The answer is here!

Although I agree with most of your recommendations and explanation of the pagefile, I'm not convinced that turning the pagefile off does not improve memory performance.

When you run XP it seems to always use the pagefile (for inactive processes) ) EVEN if it could have kept everything in RAM. This means that it wrote to the pagefile and has to read it out again if you make those processes active again. If you do not have a pagefile, you force XP to keep everything in RAM.
That said, I think the advantage of not having a pagefile is more in faster swapping between processes/alt-tabbing then in actual better framerates.

But if you have that many processes that have paged items, then the problem isn't the page file, but the fact that you have too little RAM.
If there's a need for Virtual Memory if processes demand it, it will be used in RAM. It will only become a problem, and swapped if you have to use so much RAM that there isn't enough for it all to be referenced in RAM.
This is also why having a page file that is less than your amount of RAM is a bad idea, as there has to be an area in PF that correlates to RAM, or you run into situations where .exe or.dlls will be unnecassry unloaded, to free up RAM for new process. This will only get worse if you disable page file.

The problem is that if there's no page file, you will use a lot more RAM. When a .exe starts up it ask for allocation of Virtual Memory, and if there's no page file, it will have to allocate this memory only from RAM.

This is a problem because when a .exe allocates the VM it actually might not need it. With a page file this is great as it can just be allocated from there, because Virtual Memory = RAM +PF.

But with no PF, you lock VM pages in RAM that can't be used, and it does this even if it doesn't need the allocation of Virtual Memory.
So you are using precious RAM, where it could be freed out. So the page file will actually make it so you have more fast RAM available and without it you are just locking RAM, and having less to use.

You can't stop Windows from using Virtual Memory, it wil always use it as it can't adress RAM directly, and that is why disabling PF, will only make VM smaller and put more strain on RAM, and impede memory management.

In short, you use more RAM without a PF, and you impede Windows memory management.

[Painl3ss.NL]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

In short, you use more RAM without a PF, and you impede Windows memory management.

Agreed, but I'm arguing the specific case where using more RAM is not a problem. So if you have lots of RAM and you don't mind background and idle processes hogging your RAM, does it make sense to force XP to keep everything in RAM by not having a PF? A PF is just a cheap extension of your RAM, what if you never need that extension?

[Berrern]

Re: Increase your virtual memory!

Ppl that WORK with Windows professinally and know what Virtual Memory and how it correlates to RAM and page files and how Windows uses it, would never turn the page file off.

This is your opinion/experience, not everyone agrees with you - so it's wrong to say that this goes for everyone who works with Windows professionally. I guess it also depends on how you define professionally.

Personally I use the same PC for both work and gaming. During the day, I work - and on the evenings/weekends I play.
While working I use a lot of memory hungry applications, I do a lot of PHP/SQL coding and database work, aswell as programming in Visual Basic and heavy Photoshop work. Photoshop gives a stern warning that things might not work without a pagefile, but I haven't had any problems so far.

Now, after a long day of work I often jump straight into playing - without a reboot. This works very well, so the non-existant pagefile doesn't clutter up my memory too much, as it seems you claim. Yes, the physical memory use is higher without a pagefile, but as long as you have enough RAM, that's not a problem.

I run BF2 with all graphic options set to High, in 1280x1024@100Hz with 8xAA and 16xAF. Still, after 10 hours of working, and say 4 hours of gaming, my system doesn't exceed 2GB of memory usage.

You don't see any production servers in companies that turn it off for performance.

Doh, of course you don't. A busy server uses a lot of memory, and stability and uptime is of the essence. No serveradmin would remove the pagefile from a heavily loaded server - as it does increase the chances of a crash. Myself on the other hand, is after speed, not 100% stability. If I crash once in a while that's not a big deal - however as I explained in my first post I've only crashed once because I ran out of memory.
I never said that a busy server would be better off without a pagefile, so I don't know why you brought it up?

The turning-off-the-page-file "tweaks", are just like the numorous registry tweaks that are said to work wonders for performance. Fact is that most of them don't work in XP and never have. Ppl just fall for the placebo effect and want their system to be faster and think it is.

Don't compare turning off the pagefile to a registry tweak. They are very different things wrt how your computer operates, making your point moot.
While I agree with you on the registry cleaners, there's a very different story with the pagefile.
I can understand why you don't believe it, as there's a lot of people talking out of their rears in these forums, however I'm not lying - and there IS an increase in performance. It's not a placebo effect. The areas where no pagefile is much faster is in starting, closing and swapping between applications and games. You wont get a big boost in FPS, however quitting, starting and loading are much faster.

You can't stop Windows from using Virtual Memory, it wil always use it as it can't adress RAM directly, and that is why disabling PF, will only make VM smaller and put more strain on RAM, and impede memory management.

That is very correct. What you seem to not consider though, is that using physical memory is MUCH faster than using your harddrive for virtual memory - and as long as you've got enough RAM to spare, why bother your harddrive?