How much do paging files affect performance?

[Dewa]

Like do they even do anything?

Because i have tested tf2 with 6 gb paging file & 10 gb paging file and i don't really see a performance boost of any kind

[Bad 💀 Motha]

It doesn't "boost" performance; it is there to act as a temp file for RAM swapping purposes; for when you run out of physical RAM memory, it resorts to using the PageFile (Virtual Memory); if you are seeing high hits to the PageFile, then you want more physical RAM to avoid that, cause use of the PageFile is much much slower, especially if the OS is on a mechanical HDD or overall the system lacks any kind of an SSD type of drive, which are much faster.

If you have 8+ GB installed RAM; general you do not need a PageFile; or at least not a large one. 2GB - 4GB generally should be plenty. Should it actually ever need it to begin with.

If you have 8GB RAM or less, just leave it on System/OS Auto Controlled.

[Dewa]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

It doesn't "boost" performance; it is there to act as a temp file for RAM swapping purposes; for when you run out of physical RAM memory, it resorts to using the PageFile (Virtual Memory); if you are seeing high hits to the PageFile, then you want more physical RAM to avoid that, cause use of the PageFile is much much slower, especially if the OS is on a mechanical HDD or overall the system lacks any kind of an SSD type of drive, which are much faster.

If you have 8+ GB installed RAM; general you do not need a PageFile; or at least not a large one. 2GB - 4GB generally should be plenty. Should it actually ever need it to begin with.

If you have 8GB RAM or less, just leave it on System/OS Auto Controlled.

Ahh, i see

[Bad 💀 Motha]

What is PageFile / VirtualMemory in WindowsOS and how does it work?
http://lifehacker.com/5426041/understanding-the-windows-pagefile-and-why-you-shouldnt-disable-it

[76561198343548661]

Auto is fine for that setting .

What really has a huge impact to the system is the amount of physical RAM ! 8 or 16GB is a sweet spot of this

Windows 10 last edition has a compression feature of physically stored data in RAM . If a game runs out of RAM , the performance gets worse .

[juzzyQLD]

I have 16gb of ram and having regular issues with TF2.
I think needing 16gb alone is excessive!
Any ideas?

[🦜Cloud Boy🦜]

You don't need to worry about paging files/ Virtual memory in modern Windows OS.
Windows 10/11 menage them automatically, that's the best for all scenarios.

[Cathulhu]

Originally posted by juzzyQLD:

I have 16gb of ram and having regular issues with TF2.
I think needing 16gb alone is excessive!
Any ideas?

Nothing to do with the pagefile.
Not sure why you necro'd this ancient thread.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by juzzyQLD:

I have 16gb of ram and having regular issues with TF2.
I think needing 16gb alone is excessive!
Any ideas?

Sounds more like poor pc specs or you don't know how to configure the game. Source games don't really use the page file. You can easily fit all the games assets into ram.

But I'd look at the TF2 forums for answers to your issues.