If my page file is set to 80 GB by default but isn’t being used by applications because my actual RAM utilization is always under 80%, and they have a dedicated settings menu for it, you’d think they could make getting to that settings menu not take a minimum of 8 separate clicks (assuming you have memorized exactly where to go from the start, and never click the wrong button or link), 4 separate menus, 2 nested “Advanced” menus, and multiple fields and checkboxes to tick off and edit after all of that, just to say “Use less of my disk for the page file”. This could literally be a slider in Settings.
The page file doesn’t cause major system instability if you adjust its size, unless you’re constantly using much more RAM than your system has, and the page file is manually set extremely small.
It just helps keep your system more stable by offloading excess data that can’t be stored in RAM to your disk. My entire computer, even under heavy load, never needs more then 2-5 GB of space on top of my RAM, and that’s when I’m running games at max settings, my browser with 40 tabs open, and multiple instances of 3D design software in the background, hardly a common enough occurrence for Windows to justify going “eh, maybe they’ll actually need 80 GB, you never know”, and never letting me change it even after I restart.
Swap is also used to offload data in RAM that’s used infrequently to instead prioritise caching data that doesn’t need to be in RAM but is nevertheless used more frequently.
If you’re playing Dark Souls and have a web browser open in the background, each time you die the game may need to re-load some level data or assets from disk (e.g. they relate to the area you respawn in, but not where you keep dying). If the computer can instead keep those in RAM, you can respawn faster. If it has to put Chrome on disk that may be a worthwhile tradeoff.
Yes?
If my page file is set to 80 GB by default but isn’t being used by applications because my actual RAM utilization is always under 80%, and they have a dedicated settings menu for it, you’d think they could make getting to that settings menu not take a minimum of 8 separate clicks (assuming you have memorized exactly where to go from the start, and never click the wrong button or link), 4 separate menus, 2 nested “Advanced” menus, and multiple fields and checkboxes to tick off and edit after all of that, just to say “Use less of my disk for the page file”. This could literally be a slider in Settings.
The page file doesn’t cause major system instability if you adjust its size, unless you’re constantly using much more RAM than your system has, and the page file is manually set extremely small.
It just helps keep your system more stable by offloading excess data that can’t be stored in RAM to your disk. My entire computer, even under heavy load, never needs more then 2-5 GB of space on top of my RAM, and that’s when I’m running games at max settings, my browser with 40 tabs open, and multiple instances of 3D design software in the background, hardly a common enough occurrence for Windows to justify going “eh, maybe they’ll actually need 80 GB, you never know”, and never letting me change it even after I restart.
Swap is also used to offload data in RAM that’s used infrequently to instead prioritise caching data that doesn’t need to be in RAM but is nevertheless used more frequently.
If you’re playing Dark Souls and have a web browser open in the background, each time you die the game may need to re-load some level data or assets from disk (e.g. they relate to the area you respawn in, but not where you keep dying). If the computer can instead keep those in RAM, you can respawn faster. If it has to put Chrome on disk that may be a worthwhile tradeoff.