Who benefits from doing a Pagefile thing?

[Imhotep]

I have 16 GB RAM. I have the game's expansions and am using about 20 tool-type mods, but no mod assets.

When I use the Loading Screen mod, it says

5.6 GB (apparently C:S RAM usage)
9.6 GB (apparently C:S virtual memory usage)

I don't know much about these things, but both of these numbers are less than 16. Even if I add the two numbers together, they are less than 16.

Would I benefit from doing a Pagefile thing? Would every player benefit from doing a Pagefile thing, or only certain players under certain conditions?

[Vinolik]

You won't benefit from expanding your pagefile. PS. virtual memory is a pagefile.

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by Vinolik:

You won't benefit from expanding your pagefile. PS. virtual memory is a pagefile.

Ok, thanks.

What's the difference between RAM and virtual memory? This 16 GB thing I have - what is it?

[MessengerOfRage]

I am no expert eighter but I got a couple facts together which got me to take care of my pagefile.

the main con I read about was about wearing out certain parts of your SSD.
*only true for old SSD as modern SSD relocate your pagefile.
*the smaller the SSD the more wear can concentrate
*the smaler the pagefile is the more wear can concentrate

why you should take care of your pagefile:
you have one, windows automatically generates one.
the way windows handles automatic pagefile is IMHO the worst for wear and the worst for game performance.
it's constantly adapting the pagefile size to your needs, trying to be disk space effective.
this means your pagefile is as small as possible, if you are concerned about wear rather make it a fixed big size or deactivate it.
those size adaptions are terribly slow and the game won't wait for them while loading your save which can cause stuff to fail to load.

as loading screen tells you you are useing virtual memory = your pagefile allready.
better make up your mind if you want one and eighter deactivate or set it to a fixed size by making min and max value the same, suggested vallues are 1x 2x or 3x your RAM
I use 64GB RAM +64GB fixed pagefile, my game needs 74GB.

edit: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2114415052

[MessengerOfRage]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

What's the difference between RAM and virtual memory? This 16 GB thing I have - what is it?

RAM = the fastest type of memory your computer has, how much it can process at the same time.
virtual memory = space in your storage disk reserved for pretending to be RAM, the system can drop less used RAM items into virtual memory and acsess them from there.
as virtual memory is on your disk it is way slower than RAM, virtual memory on SSD is faster than on HDD but still slower than RAM.

the 16 GB thingy is your RAM

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by Coookyman:

Originally posted by Imhotep:

What's the difference between RAM and virtual memory? This 16 GB thing I have - what is it?

RAM = the fastest type of memory your computer has, how much it can process at the same time.
virtual memory = space in your storage disk reserved for pretending to be RAM, the system can drop less used RAM items into virtual memory and acsess them from there.
as virtual memory is on your disk it is way slower than RAM, virtual memory on SSD is faster than on HDD but still slower than RAM.

the 16 GB thingy is your RAM

Thanks.

To add, I found this from the internet:

Random access memory (RAM) is physical memory that holds the applications, documents and procedures on a computer. Virtual memory is a storage area that holds the files on your hard drive for retrieval when a computer runs out of RAM.

So I am using 5.6 GB out of my 16 GB of RAM when playing the game? Would my game take longer to load and have lower FPS if I was using, say, 15.6 out of 16 GB RAM?

And if I was using over 16 GB RAM the game would crash (unless I'd set up a Pagefile thing)?

[Imhotep]

I just went to look at what my hard drives were, by typing dfrgui in Windows Run.

I have a smaller Windows (C:) drive, which is Solid state drive, and a larger DATA (D:) drive, which is Hard disk drive.

Since my Windows drive was running out of space, I've been installing my games on the D drive. Is this bad?

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

I just went to look at what my hard drives were, by typing dfrgui in Windows Run.

I have a smaller Windows (C:) drive, which is Solid state drive, and a larger DATA (D:) drive, which is Hard disk drive.

Since my Windows drive was running out of space, I've been installing my games on the D drive. Is this bad?

Looking online, such as this thread -

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/steam-games-on-ssd-or-hdd.2635488/

- it doesn't look like installing game on SSD would have much, if any, benefit, except for loading times. A save is loading for me in under ninety seconds, and around ten seconds for reloading, so I think that's not an issue for me.

[MessengerOfRage]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

I just went to look at what my hard drives were, by typing dfrgui in Windows Run.

I have a smaller Windows (C:) drive, which is Solid state drive, and a larger DATA (D:) drive, which is Hard disk drive.

Since my Windows drive was running out of space, I've been installing my games on the D drive. Is this bad?

your C: is a SSD, relatively fast, you want on it in that order:
your system - windows
your pagefile
your most used application, your most played game, stuff you constantly load

store on your D: HDD all your
less used games or aplications
all your documents
all your photos
...

[MessengerOfRage]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

- it doesn't look like installing game on SSD would have much, if any, benefit, except for loading times. A save is loading for me in under ninety seconds, and around ten seconds for reloading, so I think that's not an issue for me.

sounds reasonable, in game performance is determined by how much RAM and pagefile you have, it's loading times why I suggested your main game on the SSD... and that's also why you keep the pagefile on the SSD and move the game to HDD if space on the SSD runs out.

[MessengerOfRage]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

When I use the Loading Screen mod, it says

5.6 GB (apparently C:S RAM usage)
9.6 GB (apparently C:S virtual memory usage)

5,6 GB yes RAM used by game
9,6 GB I am not totally sure waht LSM displays there it's eighter pagefile used or pagefile+RAM used counted as one total

as your system also needs RAM it's better to look at your task managers performance overview
type in task manager in your windows search fiels lower left corner of your screen
open task manager
switch to performance tab
in the left bar click on performance
see the big graph? look at the numbers below.
the first number is your RAM used at the moment
the number directly below it is your pagefile+RAM combined useage / max pagefile+RAM combined usage.
you can substract RAM usage from combined usage to get to know pagefile usage.

[CyberVibes]

The main benefits of a pagefile is that unused assets get stored there instead of your real ram, this is a good thing as the game needs lots of processing from your ram and cpu. Switching the game from SSD to anything less will see a
degradation in the game speed. Ultimately you want the largest Nvme or SSD drive you can get with fastest ram your mobo can handle with cpu.

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by Coookyman:

Originally posted by Imhotep:

When I use the Loading Screen mod, it says

5.6 GB (apparently C:S RAM usage)
9.6 GB (apparently C:S virtual memory usage)

5,6 GB yes RAM used by game
9,6 GB I am not totally sure waht LSM displays there it's eighter pagefile used or pagefile+RAM used counted as one total

as your system also needs RAM it's better to look at your task managers performance overview
type in task manager in your windows search fiels lower left corner of your screen
open task manager
switch to performance tab
in the left bar click on performance
see the big graph? look at the numbers below.
the first number is your RAM used at the moment
the number directly below it is your pagefile+RAM combined useage / max pagefile+RAM combined usage.
you can substract RAM usage from combined usage to get to know pagefile usage.

With the game playing, it says:

In use (Compressed): 10.0 GB (296 MB)
Available: 5.7 GB

Committed: 16.9/24.3 GB
Cached: 5.8 GB

Paged pool: 722 MB
Non-paged pool: 825 MB

Originally posted by CyberVibes:

Switching the game from SSD to anything less will see a
degradation in the game speed.

So you're saying my game would play faster if it was installed on the SSD drive, not just load faster?

[CyberVibes]

Yeah your game will respond quicker on a SSD rather than a HDD due to read/write speeds.

[Imhotep]

Originally posted by CyberVibes:

Yeah your game will respond quicker on a SSD rather than a HDD due to read/write speeds.

From this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/94hi0k/citties_skylines_ssd_vs_hdd_performance/

Load time is the primary benefit, however a solid-state drive will improve your performance if you're maxing out your RAM and C:S starts using pagefile space.

I'm not maxing out my RAM, though?

[ThisHero]

Originally posted by Imhotep:

I have 16 GB RAM. I have the game's expansions and am using about 20 tool-type mods, but no mod assets.

When I use the Loading Screen mod, it says

5.6 GB (apparently C:S RAM usage)
9.6 GB (apparently C:S virtual memory usage)

Keep in mind that while the game might be using less than the 16GB you have, many other things are also using your RAM such as your operating system.

So if your computer has 16GB of RAM, before you even begin playing Cities Skylines you might have 5GB of RAM allocated to other programs and your operating system. In this hypothetical example Cities Skylines actually has 11GB of RAM available to work with.