Paging Files/VM

timlab55 · 10 Apr 2021

Okay, so here I am playing my world of warship game and notice that sometimes my fps drops or the computers starts to slow things down on me. So I looked at my drive that the game is on (as I have 2 M.2 and 3 SSD) and notice that it's taking it over 2 ms to read or write. So I figure the game is asking for something and the drive is taking a long time to give it to the game. So I started to research it and wonder if I do something with the Windows paging system or what. But then I started to read about Virtual Machines and Virtual Drives. I have 32gb of physical ram on my rig. They say that with that much Ram, I should turn off Paging.
So how can I lower the read/write cycles it takes for the game to call what ever it's calling and load it in?

ArazelEternal · 11 Apr 2021

What is the drive usage at the point where it starts to slow down? Are you able to open the task manager and see what the disk usage is when playing the game?

You also may want to look at CPU/GPU temps when you are playing to see if it might be throttling due to heat. HWMonitor is good for this.

timlab55 · 11 Apr 2021

I played a game (settings on low), and noticed that every time the program would freeze or something odd, the average response time was like 2.1. As for the heat, my temps have been staying the same. I'm going to down load Afterburner and have it monitor the program. I've also noticed that when I was typing this message that some times my type letters would stop showing up and then catch up. So what is the problem?
Thanks
Dan

Berton · 11 Apr 2021

Might also consider the difference between VM and VM. One is for Virtual Machine and the other is for Virtual Memory which is also called Paging File or Swapfile. With 32GB RAM I probably would set Performance to 0 but I'm not a gamer and some program installations look for having the Paging File active, some even look for having a Temp folder on the drive. The Paging File is storage on the drive, holds older data swapped out of RAM when newer needs it, can slow things down although it usually isn't very noticable. Rebooting when too slow clears things up.

With older versions of Windows the written recommendations in Windows Help and Support for the Paging File was 2.5 times the physical RAM then later was for 1.5 times the RAM. With 8GB and less and power-hungry programs I would set the Max. and Min. at the same number. If drive access was more continuous I'd set the P.F. at none, reboot and defrag then set Max. and Min. and reboot. The defrag made the P.F. store in all contiguous clusters on the drive and reduced the seek and read time. With 2 or more drives it was better for the P.F. to be on the fastest drive. It may not be as important when using SSD drives, either m.2 or SATA.

timlab55 · 11 Apr 2021

I figure it out :). I decided to go to the start and check all my settings. The first stop was with my BOIS. So I loaded in the defaults for it, and noticed that my XMP was turned off, so I turned it back on. I know very little about this things, but I turned it back on and then tried it my game and as I'm writing this message, no letters are missing. Ran my game first in low settings. Things worked fine. :). Then I rap up all my game settings to high or as high as they would go, and not even a cry from my game. It WORKED! So it was with my XMP.
Thanks for putting up with me.
Dan

margrave55 · 11 Apr 2021

The world of virtual memory is filled with misconceptions.

Such as the recommendation to set the paging file to some multiple of RAM size ... which is patently false.

Such as the notion that virtual memory is the same as paging ... which is a "true lie".
Paging is NOT virtual memory, but Microsoft mislabeled it that way (deliberately?) back in the days of Windows 95, perhaps because "virtual memory" is an appealing name, whilst "paging" is utterly dull.

So it's true that Microsoft equates paging and VM in the settings panel ... but they know that the two are entirely different beasts. Read any O/S text book. Or read Richter's book on the design of Windows NT.

And so does anyone with a CS background. Unfortunately most CS information comes from the web, not from academia.
Which is similar to going to a witch doctor instead of a trained physician.

Anyway ... it's good to know that you solved your problem.

Berton · 11 Apr 2021

Certainly nice that someone knows everyone else is wrong.

jimbo45 · 13 Apr 2021

Hi folks

There's also a huge difference between swapping and paging - but that's another issue.

If using VM's (whatever software you are using) it's always best if you can to use "RAW" devices for data files on the VM. This means that the Guest Windows virtual machine will use Native Disk I/O rather than paravirtualised Disk I/O. If you use paravirtualised I/O (the case say in vmdk type files) then first the VM software has to intercept the Disk command and translate it for Windows Guest to see it as a Windows NTFS data request. Not as easy as it sounds. By using RAW devices Windows accesses the Disk just as it would do on a real machine. The disadvantage though is that you need to use the whole device as a physical disk which you might not want to do if running several VM's.

This might have nothing to do with the OP's problem but just pointing out some facts here.

@margrave55

The term Virtual Memory and Paging came into use way back when with IBM mainframe systems such as VS/1 , MFT, MVT and MVS. Remember IBM big Blue mainframes -- 360 and 370 series -- or if not that old you probably would have heard of them.

A more up to date explanation from IBM is here :

IBM Docs

Cheers
jimbo

Hopachi · 13 Apr 2021

As I read from above this is a gaming topic.
VM =/= VM
I believe the VM in OP means virtual memory whereas the VM term (most) elaborated in the Virtualization topics means a virtual machine.

It's an interesting topic though. I have't touched the pagefile defaults in years.
Windows 10 handles it quite well on its own and modern disks like M.2 / SSDs are taken into account with paging options.

jimbo45 · 15 Apr 2021

Hopachi said:

As I read from above this is a gaming topic.
VM =/= VM
I believe the VM in OP means virtual memory whereas the VM term (most) elaborated in the Virtualization topics means a virtual machine.

It's an interesting topic though. I have't touched the pagefile defaults in years.
Windows 10 handles it quite well on its own and modern disks like M.2 / SSDs are taken into account with paging options.

Hi there
to add to the confustion - what about "Virtual Desktops" -- for some it simply means running more than one desktop -- especially useful if you've more than one 1 monitor and each desktop can be manipulated separately --that type of thing is standard in Linux and was available back as far as XP days where with power toys you could have 4 "Virtual desktops". I don't know if there's a modern version that will run on W10 though - probably not as necessary as people often have several video output ports these days.

Then you get "Virtual Desktop infrastructure" which can be a shared Enterprise type Virtual machine which is accessed from your desktop from a company / workplace server -- this will often be something like a Windows server edition which has corporate versions of Office, Internet browser and say standard apps such as if using ERP software for accessing SAP systyems etc. Then finally full Virtual Machines -- so for some people quite a confusing concept when you have 3 different concepts all under topic "Virtualisation" !!!!!!

Cheers
jimbo