DCS use of Pagefile

Well I just tried disabling the Pagefile in Windows 10 with my system in Sig and it errorerd DCS out upon loading a mission and I was unable to recover I had to do a hard reboot..

 

 

I am unsure what these guys who say they disable their Pagefile are doing but I dont see how it is possible when both times I tried I had problems running DCS..

I have only tried "no PageFile" with 32GB installed. It didnt crash or behave unusual. It also didnt crash on exit which i thought may happen w/O PF.

16GB might be a totally different game. Maybe a smaller mission would work.

Anyway, i do not recommend disabling the PageFile. 38GB is what I use atm.

@bitmaster: actually I would suggest letting windows to manage the page file automatically, there is 0 difference or benefit from having it by default or manually to 32 gb, I''ve also tried disabled and see no difference.

Kind of a necro, but just unchecked the "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" checkbox, and set up a fixed 32GB pagefile on my C: drive, because it's my fastest drive being NVME, and so far it seems to eliminate some occasional hiccups I've been encountering lately. (Hindsight I think I hadn't looked at my pagefile settings since my latest windows install, either that or a windows update reset it to default)

When I unchecked it, it showed system managed on C: and none on all my other drives, but I'm wondering if the automatic management was for some reason using my HDD or something. Also curious if it was just the pagefile adjusting its size on demand causing it, as another poster in this thread mentioned.

Will have to give it some more testing, using "system managed" on C: but without the checkbox for automatic paging file management. First, just need more stick time to verify that this really did something. Which would be nice, because I wasn't really looking forward to shelling out for a 32GB kit of ram.

Yep I've been recommending a fixed custom 32gb pagefile to many people, even made a post about this earlier today

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3674340&postcount=317

https://www.tweakhound.com/2011/10/10/the-windows-7-pagefile-and-running-without-one/

Mustang replied to my post before I could come back and delete it. :) Which is on me I should have tested more before posting in the first place. Not exactly sure if my issue is related to DRAM. But fixed pagefile didn't fix what I was trying to fix in the long run.

Going from 16 to 32GB is about the only real room for an upgrade at the moment with my rig. Which is the game plan eventually anyway. My wallet's just had a lot of abuse this year at the expense of PC hardware >.<

Mustang replied to my post before I could come back and delete it. :) Which is on me I should have tested more before posting in the first place. Not exactly sure if my issue is related to DRAM. But fixed pagefile didn't fix what I was trying to fix in the long run.

 

Going from 16 to 32GB is about the only real room for an upgrade at the moment with my rig. Which is the game plan eventually anyway. My wallet's just had a lot of abuse this year at the expense of PC hardware >.<

Not to mention RAM prices are insane right now.

Hi guys!. I have a good rig:

I7 9700K 5 Ghz OC

GTX 1080 TI

16 GB RAM

SSD NVMe M.2. 1 TB.

I don't like using the pagefile because of the continuous writes / readings in the SDD.

The question is: If I extend to 32 GB RAM, can I disable the pagefile without problems? I say this because by deactivating it with 16 GB I usually have CTDs on the loading screens.

The question is: If I extend to 32 GB RAM, can I disable the pagefile without problems?

Some get away with this but it's not guaranteed to be stable at all. No need to goof around. Set a 32GB pagefile and forget it. If not DCS some process my eventually need it and you'll spend whole days troubleshooting. It's not like it slows you down with SSD.

Some get away with this but it's not guaranteed to be stable at all. No need to goof around. Set a 32GB pagefile and forget it. If not DCS some process my eventually need it and you'll spend whole days troubleshooting. It's not like it slows you down with SSD.

Thx so much for your response!. Then Do you recommend upgrade to 32 GB RAM WITH PAGEFILE (32GB SDD) activated?, or is enought with 16 GB WITH PAGEFILE (32GB SDD) activated?

Then Do you recommend upgrade to 32 GB RAM WITH PAGEFILE (32GB SDD) activated?, or is enought with 16 GB WITH PAGEFILE (32GB SDD) activated?

I think with 32GB RAM you can easily use much smaller pagefile like 8-16GB. It's not written in stone - you can still overload any amount if you try hard to.

Well, your assumption is wrong. The page file is not virtual memory. It is the page file as name suggest. And DCS is not using it because no program is capable of using it. Only thing that have authority of managing the page file is your operating system.

You see, when program is loaded into the memory (the RAM) it is spitted into a chunks called pages, so your OS can manage them. And OS decides which pages are offloaded to the page file and which stays in the memory. Normally it is done by loading only the first page into the memory and based on program requests other pages are loaded and not used for a while pages are offloaded.

It is strictly OS decision which pages are considered unused and how the timers are tuned... These days all of them are dynamic, so the pages might stays in as preloaded if needed and in general the OS is not going to offload pages if you are not trying to load any additional program nor any specific task demands more memory, to keep things nice and responsive... The page file is extremely slow in comparison to the RAM speeds...

Let me know if it shared some light or you need more explanation...

Well, your assumption is wrong. The page file is not virtual memory. It is the page file as name suggest. And DCS is not using it because no program is capable of using it. Only thing that have authority of managing the page file is your operating system.

 

 

You see, when program is loaded into the memory (the RAM) it is spitted into a chunks called pages, so your OS can manage them. And OS decides which pages are offloaded to the page file and which stays in the memory. Normally it is done by loading only the first page into the memory and based on program requests other pages are loaded and not used for a while pages are offloaded.

 

 

It is strictly OS decision which pages are considered unused and how the timers are tuned... These days all of them are dynamic, so the pages might stays in as preloaded if needed and in general the OS is not going to offload pages if you are not trying to load any additional program nor any specific task demands more memory, to keep things nice and responsive... The page file is extremely slow in comparison to the RAM speeds...

 

 

Let me know if it shared some light or you need more explanation...

I understand what you are saying, but that explanation does not clarify, specifically, how DCS works best, whether with pagefile or without it and how much RAM and Pagefile size to use for optimal simulator operation. For now, I agree with Draconus' explanation, but I beg you to answer, according to your criteria, the questions asked here.

I've been quite critical of the pagefile way back, the truth is, we simply have to little RAM and VRAM, DCS needs more, some of it is probably non-optimized usage that perhaps could be lowered but if you look at all the map data and assets it's not unusual. Hopefully there aren't too many copies and garbage being left in the RAM while you play.

Now, the question is how much is normal? Do we need the whole map in RAM really?

The answer probably has to do with visibility, enough that you don't lag when you turn around 360 degrees and look at the horizon, this is already true, but not for the Targeting Pods (and that's my next thread I'll be posting I'm trying to for a couple of days)

windows is designed to use a swap file (see msdn and other docs for info). just let it do what it needs to do.

trying to prevent it from working the way it’s designed is asking for trouble.

Not quite, specialists from SysInternals and others don't really agree with MS's defaults, pagefile isn't really managed the way the GUI makes you think, it's a dumb calculation of how much RAM you have ...

There is some validity to the pagefile as it does page out some of the background stuff that does make more space in the RAM and will not create trashing. But the pagefile idea should have been improved and more transparent(stats) over the years, but it's not.

I understand what you are saying, but that explanation does not clarify, specifically, how DCS works best, whether with pagefile or without it and how much RAM and Pagefile size to use for optimal simulator operation. For now, I agree with Draconus' explanation, but I beg you to answer, according to your criteria, the questions asked here.

He's right, this is what I was going to mention as well, virtual memory is actually the memory that applications see, it's a virtual page table, and it can be huge, but it's virtual, it's just imaginary memory, but then some of those pages get commited to RAM where actually things happen, this is what Windows manages, where actual physical memory is behind it, apparently applications usually reserve and take more virtual memory than they really need, hence it's virtual, it's not going to take RAM, if you would map it directly to RAM then it would take RAM despite not using many of the bits, that's my basic idea but it gets more complicated, there's probably other reasons why virtual memory architecture exists.

This is an old thread that you brought up so I'm referring to some of the old posts on here to try to clear stuff out, because I've seen digged deeper into the Windows Memory stuff as part of my learning of the performance diagnostic tools (WPA, PerfStudio etc) and it did made my opinion with pagefile less hostile now.

So yeah to all the posts says DCS uses pagefile, no it's not DCS fault, and if it is, it's due to us who want to load all that much so we have a better experience, that's all Windows Memory Management that can, but I think it's also DCS that can reserve chunks of memory and do stuff to override the Windows memory management behavior, the point is again, we don't have enough RAM for DCS, because DCS has to keep throwing things out when it loads up other things.

The answer is, there is no pagefile fiddling that will save you, you're not going to be able to change any functions of what Windows Memory Management does, it's only the amount. You should get more RAM instead, don't waste time with pagefile settings, if you have 32GB RAM then set it to 8GB or something, you still want some pagefile because it does actually help get thing out of the way like browser data that's just sitting there doing nothing in various tabs, but that would only happen when you have like over 25 GB of RAM usage if not more, however DCS Multiplayer is more hungry than SP people say.

I understand what you are saying, but that explanation does not clarify, specifically, how DCS works best, whether with pagefile or without it and how much RAM and Pagefile size to use for optimal simulator operation. For now, I agree with Draconus' explanation, but I beg you to answer, according to your criteria, the questions asked here.

Very easy... If you thing of it the best it is exactly 0 (zero). The reason is simple. You will get the best performance if you turn the page file off and keep everything in the RAM. You will need big RAM of course, because than you can really run out of RAM and your system collapse...

I'm running mu gaming right with 0 page file, but I have 32Gb of RAM. So far no issues, with usually like 10Gb still free to use. Playing DCS in VR, but only single player campaigns so far...

Also note you should have dedicated GPU. If you use the one on the CPU than it will dedicate some of your RAM as VRAM. Which stands for Video RAM not virtual memory as popular believe. Virtual memory is something different.

Thx for your responses!.

I think that I will upgrade from 16 GB to 32 GB RAM and test it with and without a pagefile.sys of 16 gb size. This will should be enought!.

Did I mention that I botched my build in 2013 with the low profile CPU cooler (didn't knew), blocking my 2 DRAM slots, and then when I upgraded I put 4GB sticks in instead of 2x8GB like the initial set.

Well, I just pulled the trigger on a pair of 8GB more to get me to 32GB because I ain't having it no more, I'll modify the CPU cooler if I have to FFS or get another one for this socket ... but it's late, I can't run some of the analysis tools because it just craps out when commit reaches 24GB, I should have done this way earlier, but still the PC is gonna go for 2 years relatively before I upgrade the core and to DDR4.

Certainly proved it to me. I have a new system, 32Gig of fast RAM, but I thought I'll help it along with adding a 32Gig page file. All of a sudden abysmal performance! A stuttering mess! Totally unplayable (this was hosting with 16 people connected). I figured today it was constantly accessing the page file when with 32Gig of RAM it was totally unnecessary. I've gone back to the default and it is smooth as again. This is a layman's explanation of what happened....

Certainly proved it to me. I have a new system, 32Gig of fast RAM, but I thought I'll help it along with adding a 32Gig page file. All of a sudden abysmal performance! A stuttering mess! Totally unplayable (this was hosting with 16 people connected). I figured today it was constantly accessing the page file when with 32Gig of RAM it was totally unnecessary. I've gone back to the default and it is smooth as again. This is a layman's explanation of what happened....

How did you find that out, Windows tracing can be tricky, I thought that as well, but you really got to check that in the right tool otherwise it's can be deceiving. It may be true but a mistunderstanding, are you looking at Commit, is it over your RAM? Because Commit is what matters, not "In Use" or "Physical Used". Don't read some of those labels literally in Task Manager, compare with Process Explorer for example to get an idea, you'll see same numbers but a different name. (make sure you actually configure columns to show all of that)

In my case dcs take about 19 Gb of ram. My versión is 2.5.5 and game SP Is this normal nowday?

In my case dcs take about 19 Gb of ram. My versión is 2.5.5 and game SP Is this normal nowday?

It is dependant on the settings, map, mission, MP/SP... so may be normal or not.

It is dependant on the settings, map, mission, MP/SP... so may be normal or not.

I see it is normal now But before the same setting and misión used about 12 Gb.

Anteayer Thanks draconus

I see it is normal now But before the same setting and misión used about 12 Gb.

That's because DCS is changing too, and even the same mission, same settings is now going to load new cockpit for A-10C, improved weapon models, new textures for AI and new buildings and shaders added to PG map with extended visible range - just an example.

That's because DCS is changing too, and even the same mission, same settings is now going to load new cockpit for A-10C, improved weapon models, new textures for AI and new buildings and shaders added to PG map with extended visible range - just an example.

Then where are the improve and optimization in this game ?.Buy and Buy more hardware every time If you want enjoy this sim.

I dont see very well this bussines in the future.:cry:

DCS is constantly evolving. You can't have better textures, effects, 3D models, more simulations and better AI for nothing. Same for Windows or Photoshop ;)