Tweaking the Paging File-Rumors, Myths, & Urban Legends!

[Branjo]

Now as you say you have built gaming rigs for people, That in itself is an indication of the person buying it. I believe half the fun in having a PC is choosing the parts and building it yourself.

Everyone has made the mistake of walking into a store and choosing a computer for $xxxx, and then getting on the internet and seeing someone else with a superior setup for $xxx. That happened to me after I bought a rig in 99, never again.

 

Now to have someone build you a PC and then spend all day long running benchmarks is a little on the weird side, im gonna have to agree with you on that one. Even so its their rig and if thats how they get there jolly's then more power to them.

 

And dude I in no way meant to flame you any way shape or form. I am a little sarcastic at times and in black and white it kinda looses its charm...lol

 

I only upgrade when my rig cant cut the mustard with the latest games. This has happened a lot lately but I have to say I have tried overclocking as much as I can. I have also had to run a few benchmarks here and there for stress testing, but on a very brief basis ie 1 run of 3d mark and 30 min OCCT.

I dont have the patients to wait 8 hours for prime 95, I think that is a little overkill but again its just not my cup of tea.

If I crash during an overclock then I back it off and go on as normal.

If I corrupt my XP install then I spend 20 mins on a fresh one.

 

If I had a work bench with 4 rigs on it I would be benching and OCing a lot more, it is nice to see how far you can push things. Having one rig there isn't much point in denying yourself a great game of BF2 or Oblivion in order to run 5 hours of continuous loops of 3D mark 03 before you go to bed.

 

With regards to Vista. When I first installed Vista I was very impressed until I realized that it was basically the GUI that was impressing me...lol. Then I thought about win98, I couldn't wait to get rid of that POS, When every one got a hold of the leaked corp version of XP I was right there at the start. When it hit the shelves I bought it that day and have used that copy ever since. Going from 98 to XP was one of the smartest things I did, but XP isn't bad enough for me to make the jump to vista. Maybe I'll just skip Vista and wait for the new windows they are already working on.

 

Ok to end this long assed post. The mere fact that you are enjoying your rig to the fullest is because you have already done all the benchmarking and OCing. Now you (and I ) have realized that all the overclocking in the world on a CPU or GPU doesn't beat the buzz of buying a top end CPU or card.

But your not going to know that until you experience both. We are all just at different stages, and no better than the person before or after us.

[ReelFiles]

It is a SQL Micros 3700 (Cash Register) server for a large Hospital. We also do electronic Payroll Deduction for 7000+ employees, and this server is part of that system also.

 

I just re-read the thread, if this was a customer's personal PC I'd say "Tweak it till your testicles glow", but are you sure you wanna start customizing a server that has to maintain a sensitive database? Sounds like trouble to me.

[OneArmed Badger]

For optimal page file performance you should have equally sized paging files on each of your physical disks. Windows will then access them all simultaneously in a manner similar to raid.

 

Of course this doesn't take into the account the situation where Windows is using the paging file and accessing other files at the same time. Which other files you are accessing depends on what program you are running.

 

If, as an example, you have two disks C and D, 1 Gig RAM, and you have a game such as BF2 on disk D. BF2 will be accessing D while it is loading a map, but during actual gameplay it won't be using either disk. Any disk activity while you're playing will be page file activity. So for optimal performance during game play you should have the paging file on both C and D. But, for optimal performance during loading you should only have a paging file on C. You need to decide for yourself which placement best meets your needs.

 

Or, you could buy 2 Gigs of RAM and stop worrying about the paging file.

[Guest Lavell]

Branjo,

 

I agree with you 100%. Half of the fun is to buy the parts and putting the system together yourself. The other half is tweaking the system for the best performance and enjoying the rig for whatever it was designed for. Again, I'm expressing my opinion. I know that you are not trying to flame me. You are just expressing your opinion. I respect that. I just wanted you to understand where I'm coming from. No offense taken.

 

Now as you say you have built gaming rigs for people, That in itself is an indication of the person buying it. I believe half the fun in having a PC is choosing the parts and building it yourself.

Everyone has made the mistake of walking into a store and choosing a computer for $xxxx, and then getting on the internet and seeing someone else with a superior setup for $xxx. That happened to me after I bought a rig in 99, never again.

 

Now to have someone build you a PC and then spend all day long running benchmarks is a little on the weird side, im gonna have to agree with you on that one. Even so its their rig and if thats how they get there jolly's then more power to them.

 

And dude I in no way meant to flame you any way shape or form. I am a little sarcastic at times and in black and white it kinda looses its charm...lol

 

I only upgrade when my rig cant cut the mustard with the latest games. This has happened a lot lately but I have to say I have tried overclocking as much as I can. I have also had to run a few benchmarks here and there for stress testing, but on a very brief basis ie 1 run of 3d mark and 30 min OCCT.

I dont have the patients to wait 8 hours for prime 95, I think that is a little overkill but again its just not my cup of tea.

If I crash during an overclock then I back it off and go on as normal.

If I corrupt my XP install then I spend 20 mins on a fresh one.

 

If I had a work bench with 4 rigs on it I would be benching and OCing a lot more, it is nice to see how far you can push things. Having one rig there isn't much point in denying yourself a great game of BF2 or Oblivion in order to run 5 hours of continuous loops of 3D mark 03 before you go to bed.

 

With regards to Vista. When I first installed Vista I was very impressed until I realized that it was basically the GUI that was impressing me...lol. Then I thought about win98, I couldn't wait to get rid of that POS, When every one got a hold of the leaked corp version of XP I was right there at the start. When it hit the shelves I bought it that day and have used that copy ever since. Going from 98 to XP was one of the smartest things I did, but XP isn't bad enough for me to make the jump to vista. Maybe I'll just skip Vista and wait for the new windows they are already working on.

 

Ok to end this long assed post. The mere fact that you are enjoying your rig to the fullest is because you have already done all the benchmarking and OCing. Now you (and I ) have realized that all the overclocking in the world on a CPU or GPU doesn't beat the buzz of buying a top end CPU or card.

But your not going to know that until you experience both. We are all just at different stages, and no better than the person before or after us.

[Thraxz]

With regards to Vista. When I first installed Vista I was very impressed until I realized that it was basically the GUI that was impressing me...lol. Then I thought about win98, I couldn't wait to get rid of that POS, When every one got a hold of the leaked corp version of XP I was right there at the start. When it hit the shelves I bought it that day and have used that copy ever since. Going from 98 to XP was one of the smartest things I did, but XP isn't bad enough for me to make the jump to vista. Maybe I'll just skip Vista and wait for the new windows they are already working on.

 

http://www.windowsxlive.net/?p=361

 

Me... to the rescue! (I used it it works.)

 

Proof

http://weboperative.com/OCIDB/thraxz/OTHER/pi2.JPG

[Branjo]

Ah Ha! Nice one Thraxz, may the force be with you Gonna get it now.

[Branjo]

Branjo,

 

I agree with you 100%. Half of the fun is to buy the parts and putting the system together yourself. The other half is tweaking the system for the best performance and enjoying the rig for whatever it was designed for. Again, I'm expressing my opinion. I know that you are not trying to flame me. You are just expressing your opinion. I respect that. I just wanted you to understand where I'm coming from. No offense taken.

 

Understood completely Lavell, respect my friend. And BTW you do have a kick butt Rig. I patiently wait for the day my Sig takes up so much space...lol

[Guest Lavell]

Thanks for the compliment. Your rig kicks butt also.

 

Understood completely Lavell, respect my friend. And BTW you do have a kick butt Rig. I patiently wait for the day my Sig takes up so much space...lol

[BuddTX]

I just re-read the thread, if this was a customer's personal PC I'd say "Tweak it till your testicles glow", but are you sure you wanna start customizing a server that has to maintain a sensitive database? Sounds like trouble to me.

 

Very good advice, thanks! However, this particular PC is a Dell Poweredge Server, and there will be NO OVERCLOCKING (Can you even overclock a Dell?). It HAS 2, 3.8 GHz Intel Xenon Processors in it, and two CPU heat sinks that would make any overclocker proud (I can see 4 seperate copper heat pipes, for each processor!).

 

I think that 2, 3.8 Ghz Xenon processors on one Dell Motherboard should be "good enough" for a long while, even at "Stock" speeds!

 

I will be fine tuning the Dell Server, and installing the 2 extra hard drives ( 4 total) so that I can dedicate a seperate HD Channel for the OS,Paging File, DataBase and Database App.

 

Stability is very important! I debated to myself about adding 2 extra IDE drives, instead of SATA drives, because the box only supports 2 SATA drives. To add more Sata drives, I would have had to add an extra Sata controller, and Molex to Sata Power Adaptors. I decided to go with the IDE drives for stability, as the extra SATA controller and power adaptors, would just be adding more points of failure.

 

Again, why didn't I just spec a better box? Long story, but when I wrote the original spec's this was exactly what I wanted, but after I purchased the box, the software company (micros) upgraded their OS options, so now, instead of moving (ghosting) the existing W2K 2 disk Server over to new hardware, I can do a complete new install with Server 2003.

[p0tter]

Has anyone tried or heard of using a removable flash drive for page file? The price of flash memory has been on the fall.. so ?

 

Anyone?

[grafton]

i had that idea for a computer thats running xp pro with a 1.3 gb harddrive the problem so i have heard is that flash has a finite lifespan which can cause problems for something is being read and written a lot

[BuddTX]

if you do a search here at the forum I know there is a couple of rather large threads on this debate already...And A_G gave his opinion in most of them...so It might be easier to search than to get a canned responce...

 

http://www.diy-street.com/forum/showthread...light=page+file

 

http://www.diy-street.com/forum/showthread...light=page+file

 

http://www.diy-street.com/forum/showthread...light=page+file

 

http://www.diy-street.com/forum/showthread...light=page+file

 

and those are just the longer ones...

 

Thanks, there is a lot of info here!

 

These posts actually reinforces my point, that there are so many different thoughts as to what one should do with the paging file.

 

I did read something interesting, and I hope I read it correctly.

 

I read that if you put a paging file on all your hard drives, the OS will automaticly access all of the paging files and share the data across all the drives.

 

So if you had 4 hard drives, and built a small paging file on each drive, the OS would send 25% of "whatever" to each drive.

 

Did I understand that correctly?