|
The virtual memory (swap file) is one of the most important factors for Windows performance. It is a vital part of the memory management process: If your run too many programs, your computer might run out of memory and swaps data to a special part of your hard disk: The page file (or swap file). Now, there are hundreds of rumours regarding the best size of the swap file. Let me tell you, there is NO one-size-fits-all solution to this: The size depends on the way you work with your computer. A professional developer might need considerably more virtual memory than a home user who basically just uses Office and Internet Explorer or Windows Media Player. We show you the best way to optimize the swap file to fit your needs:
1. Right-click on My computer and select Properties. Go to the Advanced tab and click on Settings (under Performance). Change to Advanced, hit Change and select the target drive for your virtual memory file.
2. We recommend selecting the fastest hard disk with the most disk space available. For instance, if you have two hard disks, one a 5.400 rpm 30 GB and the second a 7.200 pm 120 GB drive, it would be wise to select the latter.
3. Now, lets go to the Initial Size (MB) and Maximum Size (MB) settings. We have tested the following settings with several people and totally different needs. They proved to be the best way of optimizing and adapting the swap file to your specific environment.
Standard user: Mainly he/she uses his/her machine for standard office applications (Word, Excel etc.), E-Mailing and surfing the internet. On occasions, he/she likes to play some low-end games like Age of Empires II and the like, but he/she never runs more than 3-5 applications simultaneously.
Initial: 512 MB
Maximum: 512 MB
Gamer: He/She loves to play the latest highend games like Half-Life 2 and has the right equipment to play them in full resolution and all the details. Such games make heavy use of gigantic textures, cinema-like soundtracks and a complexe artifical intelligence which all need to be loaded into memory (RAM). Windows needs to swap out more often so we need to set the page file considerably higher.
Initial: 1024 MB
Maximum: 1024 MB
Highend user: He/She runs several highend-applications like development-tools, video/audio/photo editing suites simultaneously and has more than 512 MB RAM. We have talked to several professional users as well as companies and included our own experience with such applications which all leads us to the following conclusion:
Initial: 1536 MB
Maximum: 1536 MB
Hit OK to apply the settings and restart your computer for the changes to take effect! You will feel that Windows handles applications faster!
|
