2 Questions??

[Ovi]

Hello everyone
Today I bought NFS-Porsche 2000. It’s really an excellent game and runs flawlessly on my G200 (8 MB). But is there any difference between this game and NFS-Porsche Unleashed?? And when I ran the game for the first time, it said that my swap file wasn’t large enough (I had set it to 130 MB on my 64 MB system), so I increased it to 160 MB and now everything’s fine. But what would you recommend as the ideal swap file size for a 64 MB system? Please advise
Thanks
Ovi

[nehalmistry]

if i can remember the formula correctly... its
2.5x ur memory upto 128megs..and
1.5x ur memory if u got >128megs

but i dont follow it... i have 64 megs and 128 meg swap file.... thats just perfect for me... no game has ever given me low swap file error msg.


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P5A-B AMD K6-300
Matrox Milleniumm G200 AGP
Creative SB Awe32 (a classic, superb card)
Realtek 8029A NIC Card
64meg Ram
Ali V agp chipset

[WarFlail]

Does it really improve performance to manually set a swap file? I tried setting mine to 256MB (I have 128MB physical RAM) but didn't see any better performance over having Win98 manage the swap file for me. (I had been experimenting to see how I can improve performance of Ultima IX.)

Most of my games are on D: drive and my swap file is on C: drive. I believe having the swap file on a different drive can be very helpful.

If you manually fixed your swap file and then get an error, how about you try it with Windows managing the virtual memory for you? See if that helps.

-=W=-



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My system specs:
Intel Pentium III 650MHz
Asus P2B motherboard
128MB PC-100 SDRAM
Matrox G400 32MB SH @ 184.50MHz, running ParaKnowYa's driver pack v1.5
Creative Sound Blaster Live! Value with latest drivers
Quantum Fireball ST 6.4GB & 4.3GB
I/O Magic 8X DVD-ROM (region-free)
Kenwood 42X TrueX CD-ROM
CTX PR711 17" Monitor, currently running 1024x768x32 @ 85Hz
Windows 98 (not SE)
3DMark2000 default benchmark score: 2991

[fds]

The game is called Porsche 2000 in Europe, Porsche Unleashed in the US.

[Ovi]

Thanks for the info everyone
Warflail: I've noticed that setting a fixed swap file reduces the occasional disk swapping while playing games which involve large texture sizes.Your RAM is already enough,so swapping will not take place much anyway and hence you won't notice much diff if you set a fixed swap file.In my case,NFS was giving the error message of my swap file being too small when it was set at 130 MB,but since I then increased it to 160 MB,NFS didn't complain. So there's no problem now.
Thanks
Ovi

[DosFreak]

Also setting the swap file to a fixed amount will will not let the swap fileget fragmented. Letting Windows manage the swap file will fragment the swap file. This is a bad thing.

[impact]

Yes, fixed swap files do prevent fragmentation, but there are some drawbacks... if you set it too low, sometimes the computer might end up with no memory avaiable, if you set it too big, you're effectvely wasting HD space. I prefer setting it to 128 and more. For my 64MB system, this is enough to run almost anything without any extra swapping, and if more memory than 196 MB is needed (and it often is), the system just enlarges the swap file.

I have witnessed a system with 512MB RAM fail because it ran out of memory with a fixed swap file of 256MB. Not nice.

[WarFlail]

When setting a swap file manually in Windows, is it better to set the Minimum and Maximum sizes as the same value? Or can you have a range, such as with a 64MB system, setting a swap file minimum of 128MB and a maximum of 160MB?

-=W=-

[Ovi]

Hi WarFlail
It's better to set min and max sizes as the same coz then windows doesn't have to keep changing the swapfile's size. Of course,those min and max sizes have to be enough to prevent an out of memory error
Ovi

[WarFlail]

Thanks Ovi,

I am currently playing Ultima IX Ascension, which unfortunately is only optimised for 3dfx cards. So to get an acceptable framerate on my G400, I have had to (among other things) manually set a swap file.

Origin (the makers of U9) suggest that the total of your physical memory plus the virtual memory should equal at least 512MB. Since I have 128MB RAM, I have set my swap file size to 384MB. The result: significantly less hard disk thrashing in U9.

This is certainly larger than the swap file sizes being recommended in the posts above.

-=W=-

[Ovi]

Hi WarFlail
This 512 MB thing is new to me!! Did it really improve performance on your comp?? I think that even sizes smaller than this would have the same effect (upto certain limits,that is!)
Cheers
Ovi

[Rik]

WarFlail -
Are you using a fully patched Ultima IX?
I think that the initial versions only needed a huge swapfile to accomodate memory leaks. I found that with 128mb and a reasonably clean system swapfile usage was rarely more than about 40mb. (Mind you, I did run it on A Voodoo II and did some pretty heavy-duty tweakage to minimise disk loading).


[This message has been edited by Rik (edited 16 June 2000).]

[WarFlail]

Ovi & Rik,

To tell the truth, it doesn't seem any different from just setting the swap file equal to twice my physical RAM. So far, though, I have enough room on my hard drive that it really doesn't matter, so I might leave the swap file on its current setting.

I am playing the fully-patched version of U9.

-=W=-

[fds]

I've had 512 MB RAM for years now and I always used a fixed swap file of either 64 or 128 MB.

Windows is sometimes using virtual memory no matter the amount of free RAM.

With virtual memory disabled, games couldn't even initialize DirectSound for example.