/3GB switch and page file question?

[matrix2003]

Hey -lovin the latest . ver 

I will be venturing into boot.ini and adding the /3GB switch in my version of Windows XP Professional.
My question is that when I ran this by my IT guru old friend at work, he said to kill off my windows swap file.
I have 3 gig of memory and had set the file size to the largest size some time ago in an attempt to provide terragen more room, memory, more resources - whatever, more horsepower if you will!

What should be the proper swap file with 3Gigs of sys mem on a WinXP-pro system be set to?
and-  Is my guy right?  KIll off the swap file and use just system memory for renders?
Or should I put it back to the default as in windows manages the swap file dynamically?

Anyone have any views?  My system is: Dell 8300, XP PRO SP3, Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.4GHz  (sorry no dual quad yet!)

Bill Reid.   

[Oshyan]

I tend to favor having Windows manage the swap file. I've seldom seen any real gains or improvements come from setting a static swap file even though many people do advocate that for various supposed reasons. There can be some momentary overhead in increasing the swap file if it's too small, but this is extremely rare since Windows usually keeps a healthy-sized swap file in place anyway. Windows will almost always use main memory preferentially to swap file memory, so making your swap 0 also shouldn't help performance. As I said I think it's best just to let Windows manage it.

By the way, setting your swap file to be large wouldn't have helped previously since you already had more memory than TG2 could address without the /3GB switch.

- Oshyan

[Kevin F]

My boot ini file has /NoExecute=OptIn as the last item. Is this significant and is my /3GB switch in the right place?

i.e. ..........WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /3GB/NoExecute=OptIn

[Oshyan]

Kevin, I'm not sure of the exact format as I use a 64 bit version of Windows myself. I'd recommend referencing Microsoft's official documentation on the matter for the most authoritative information.

- Oshyan

[rcallicotte]

@matrix, this might help - http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=3878.msg40610#msg40610  I've already done some of the work for you.

[matrix2003]

Thanks Oshyan.  Always trying to push the limits, right or wrong.  You know us terra-geeks: fiddle with something maybe it will help!
OK so I will go back to the default there and then turn on the /3GB switch.
...and Thankyou calico for that link.  Much appreciated!

Bill Reid.