virtual memory

[condog209]

as of recently i have notice that my hard drive will go into virtual memory even tho i more than plenty of ram left to not have to use 
im at 61% ram usage with and chrome or firefox skype, volumke mixer, radeon overdrive, and taskmanager all open

but my hard drive somethimes goes to 0.1mbs and all these application 
and when im playing league of legends i close my internet browser so i dont use up my ram but after i load in my in the middle of the game my hard drive will still go from 0.1 mbs to 3 mbs 
pls tell me if i can stop this from happening 
Star Wars battlefront is unplayable because it goes from 3mbs-10mbs 
 

[Godlygamer23]

The hard drive is going to be accessed. That's where the game data is coming from.

[condog209]

i understand that but once the map is fully downloaded the hard drive should not be in use

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, condog209 said:

i understand that but once the map is fully downloaded the hard drive should not be in use

Believe it or not, Windows is paging to my SSD right now, even though I'm not consuming all of my RAM. You can try disabling the page file, but bear in mind that if you consume all of your RAM and try to use more, you will get a blue screen.

[condog209]

how do i disable the page file

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, condog209 said:

how do i disable the page file

What version of Windows are you running?

[condog209]

windows 10 64 bit

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, condog209 said:

windows 10 64 bit

Go into Control Panel and navigate to System and Security. After that, click on System. On the left hand side in the top corner, you should see a list of options - click on Advanced system settings. A window will pop up with one of the sections being labeled Performance and a button labeled Settings. Click on it and navigate to the Advanced tab. You should be greeted by the Virtual Memory aka page file section. After making adjustments, you may or may not need to perform a restart.

[condog209]

ok thanks for the help 
can always count on linus tech tips forum

 

[Captain_WD]

6 hours ago, condog209 said:

~snip~

 

Hey there condog209,

Be  careful with disabling the pagefile. If you run out of memory or the computer decides that something from the memory needs to be cached you might encounter a system error. What are your system specs? What's your storage configuration?

The drive is accessed by the OS constantly if the OS is installed on it for any system files and other things. Games also turn to the drive if they make autosaves or need to load something from the libraries or a texture file. The game is installed on the drive after all, it doesn't transfer everything to the memory.

Captain_WD.

[condog209]

i will be i have second monitor to monitor my gpu. cpu , and memory usage

[Răzvan Botea]

It's not recommended to disable swap file altogether.

 

I recently bought 16GB of RAM on my laptop (for a total of 24GB). I tried opening as much programs as I can + 20 Chrome tabs + GTA 5 and watched my memory usage on the task manager. It barely got it at 45% but the real deal is at the "Committed" section. 10.8GB in use and ~16GB commited. What committed means ? It's the total memory in use + memory reserved by applications that MAY be paged (in the page file). If somehow you get to that maximum Committed limit and you have disabled swap file, chances are you may run into problems. Windows can reserve more memory because the swap has been handicapped.

 

In order to know if it's safe for you to severely limit pagefile size (I set mine to 200-400 MB when I tested my RAM usage): just open as much programs as you can realistically determine you'll be using at the same time. The commit charge must be under (leave it a "spare" space of about 1gig) physical RAM + Max swap size. If you're RAM can contain all that Commit charge under these conditions, you're in good luck and can set the page file to 200-400 megs, otherwise specify a larger hard limit.

 

Even with a fast sata3 SSD the benefits of limiting the page file like that were noticeable, now most programs open faster than my eye/mouse reaction time. Of course, I have 24GB.

 

Some programs won't even work if you have swap file disabled.

[Captain_WD]

On 2.03.2016 г. at 6:49 PM, condog209 said:

~snip~

 

I'd take @Răzvan Botea's suggestion as the way RAM works and can be managed was explained pretty well. Some programs do require an active pagefile and it is a good idea to have it on. You can manipulate the way it works and the size it takes so you should be fine in terms of storage space. Here's a good article on how to change the size: Windows Article

Captain_WD.

[Răzvan Botea]

I wrote that after reading this article: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/markrussinovich/2008/11/17/pushing-the-limits-of-windows-virtual-memory/ . More specifically the How Big Should I Make the Paging File? section.