I have 4Gb of RAM installed on 32-bit Win XP SP2. Of course XP sees only 3Gb of ram – 4 is max for 32bit windows.
My question is about paging file for perfect setting the Photoshop.
I read some forums suggesting lowering paging file to 100 Mb or even turning it of, with such a huge amount of RAM, but others suggest not to do that, because PHOTOSHOP needs it. Lowering it or turning it of would speed up the system (and it does – I tried that. It’s because services load up in RAM instead on the disk)
So what do i do? What’s IDEAL paging file setting for Photoshop when i have 4Gb of rAM?
Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.
I have 4Gb of RAM installed on 32-bit Win XP SP2. Of course XP sees only 3Gb of ram – 4 is max for 32bit windows. My question is about paging file for perfect setting the Photoshop. I read some forums suggesting lowering paging file to 100 Mb or even turning it of, with such a huge amount of RAM, but others suggest not to do that, because PHOTOSHOP needs it. Lowering it or turning it of would speed up the system (and it does – I tried that. It’s because services load up in RAM instead on the disk) So what do i do? What’s IDEAL paging file setting for Photoshop when i have 4Gb of rAM?
The real question is whether you need a paging file at all, not how large it should be. Regardless of how much physical RAM you have the memory caching algorithms in Windows seek out a paging file on a hard drive and use it. I have never seen a good explanation for why but its a fact of Windows life. Microsoft’s recommendations for paging file size and the size of the paging file that the OS will automatically set up seems quite large. If you look at what your system is doing using task manager you will find the paging file in use although there is more than enough physical ram available for what the OS needs to use. Presumably there are reasons for this, but they may not be good ones and may be based on assumptions about hardware that are out of date. And if you have a dual core, let alone quad core CPU, there is a large amount of unaccounted for RAM in the onchip cache. That’s the memory that really speeds up the CPU performance. particulary in a quad core where 3 of the 4 cores are not doing very much most of the time. There is conflicting information about whether a 32 bit OS can use 2 or 3 GBs of RAM. The practical truth seems closer to 2gbs than 3 and I don’t recall seeing objective tests showing significant performance gains above 2 gbs RAM. This may be a result of the way Windows allocates memory. The only way to test whether you really need a paging file is to turn it off completely. There is no harm done. Then you will have the definitive answer for your particular uses about what size paging file you need.
Running with no page file (or a minimal one) can be a recipe for disaster under the right circumstances. If you’re willing to risk your work, give it a try. If you’re inclined to believe, as I do, that a few seconds lost is nothing compared to losing a couple hours of work if your system goes toes-up, then you’ll run with a proper page file.
How about a very small pagefile? Are there any known facts about pagefile and big RAM? I realy don’t know what to do….
The funiest thing is that when i had 2 MB of ram, I never ran out of it (in photoshop), now that I have 4 Mb my system is telling me at least twice a day, that some app has crashed because of low ram.
The recommendation that has been made here by Adobe engineers is to set both the initial and the maximum size of the pagefile to 1-2x your RAM. If you have more RAM, you can use a lower multiple; if you have less RAM, you should go with 2x. The fixed initial and maximum size means that the pagefile gets created once and doesn’t shrink and grow, which can slow things down due to the need for the OS to allocate and deallocate disk space, and also can lead to a fragmented pagefile.
Windows dynamic Pagefile allocation is transparent in XP. You will not know it’s happening, at least as long as you set a sufficient minimum size. There’s no real advantage in setting a maximum. Really it’s best just to let Windows handle it. Because…
Pagefile fragmentation is pretty much a myth and has little effect on performance. As long as the page file was created on a freshly defragged partition (or a new HD), there’s no need to worry about it because the pagefile is not accessed in such a way that sustained transfer rates matter.
Once the pagefile is set up, then on each boot it will never be in a worse fragmentation state than it was after setup. If setup included defragging the target drive or partition, then on every boot after that it will always be perfectly contiguous. If setup didn’t include defragging, then you can use a boot time defrag utility to accomplish the task. Run it once and you’re done. Forever.
Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.
Related Discussion Topics
Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections
