Virtual Memory Advice for Vista 64 & 8GB of Ram

  • Thread starter Thread starter Max
  • Start date Start date
M

Max

I recently built a new system and did a clean install of Vista Ultimate 64.
The system has 8GB of Physical RAM (DDR2) clocked at 1098 and a E8500 clocked
at 3.47 Ghz. Everything is running very stable for a few weeks now.

When I look at the system report I see that Windows is setting up 16GB of
Virtual Memory which seems excessive, I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't
be better for me to set the VM myself instead of letting Windows handle it;
however I have no idea what setting would be optimal? I have a single 740 GB
Hard Disk installed, I have listed the Vista system report below.

I did a search for this information and could find very little credible
information regarding VM settings for Vista 64 Ultimate using 8GB of Ram.

OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate
Version 6.0.6001 Service Pack 1 Build 6001
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name My-PC
System Manufacturer Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model X48-DQ6
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz, 3477 Mhz, 2
Core(s), 2 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date Award Software International, Inc. F6, 2/29/2008
SMBIOS Version 2.4
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.0.6001.18000"
User Name Lou-PC\Lou
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 4.00 GB
Available Physical Memory 6.78 GB
Total Virtual Memory 16.1 GB
Available Virtual Memory 14.9 GB
Page File Space 8.29 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys
 
One and half to twice as much of physical RAM is optimal. You can set it
yourself to 12 GB to 16 GB. It doesn't really matter, as you have the hard
drive space, and it probably rarely hits the virtual memory, anyway with
that much RAM.

But, if you want to lower it, I'd probably only go with 12 GB.

--

Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com | Vista Resource & Information Page

Was this helpful? Then click the Ratings button. Voting helps the web
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Dustin Harper said:
One and half to twice as much of physical RAM is optimal. You can set it
yourself to 12 GB to 16 GB. It doesn't really matter, as you have the hard
drive space, and it probably rarely hits the virtual memory, anyway with
that much RAM.

But, if you want to lower it, I'd probably only go with 12 GB.

--

Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com | Vista Resource & Information Page

Was this helpful? Then click the Ratings button. Voting helps the web
interface.
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Click to expand...
 
Dustin Harper said:
One and half to twice as much of physical RAM is optimal. You can set it
yourself to 12 GB to 16 GB. It doesn't really matter, as you have the hard
drive space, and it probably rarely hits the virtual memory, anyway with
that much RAM.

But, if you want to lower it, I'd probably only go with 12 GB.

--

Dustin Harper
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.vistarip.com | Vista Resource & Information Page

Was this helpful? Then click the Ratings button. Voting helps the web
interface.
http://www.microsoft.com/wn3/locales/help/help_en-us.htm#RateAPostAsAnswer
Click to expand...
Thank you Dustin, I will follow your advice, I never mentioned this,
however a big reason for my asking about is; Windows seems to take a bit
longer to start when I went for 4GB of ram to 8 GB and programs like IE seem
to take alonger to open.

I play many games on my system like Crysis, Mass effect, Age of Conan and
the stability with 8GB has been fine; however I can't help but wonder if with
windows managing all those addressess spaces 8GB physical 16GB Virtual it
causes the longer start time and load times?

Or maybe it just in my head, I havent actually tested it?
 
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