GIVE WINDOWS A HUGE BOOST!

P54

FREE
DVD
56 GAMES

ISSUE 230 SEP 2009

PERFORMANCE GEAR & GAMING

ISSUE 230 IT CANT RAIN ALL THE TIME

IT CANT RAIN ALL THE TIME

AMD: still best for budget gaming?

A BRUTAL CROSS
BETWEEN DIABLO AND
ROGER RABBIT

Dave loots and shoots in Borderlands

Pixel-perfect shooters
12 gaming mice in the labs

WWW.PCFORMAT.CO.UK

THERES MORE
Gigabyte: behind the scenes
Core i5 specs revealed
Real Time Strategy classics!

Men
Warof
ARMA 2: WAR HAS
NEVER FELT SO REAL

PCF230.cover 1

HOTWIRED!
GET MORE FROM YOU RIG

DIY WATER COOLING

MAKE A CASE SENSOR
CORE i7 OVERCLOCKING

EVEN MORE

NOVATECH X90 GTX PRO

MESH SLAYER PC
COOLIT DOMINO
ASUS XONAR DS
PROTOTYPE: UNLOCK ZOTAC ION MOBO
TRINE, ANNO 1404
GENETIC SHACKLES

Issue 230 Sep 2009 5.99 Outside UK & ROI 6.49

15/7/09 10:10:25 am

Illustration: Paul Blachford

54

PCF230.feature1 54

September 2009

16/7/09 8:20:22 am

O
You pti
m
r S ise
w
W
ap
le
Tak
Ne e pa
il M ge
oh le
r b op
en tim
ch isi
ma ng
rks to
all the
the ext
opt rem
ion e, a
s
s

ew
ab ere
the out i aske
an
d
tho re fo t ,
r a i s we r
so ug h re w
ye s e s i s . I t
m
a
s
me
a n e a t we e
gru r, ev t s u one
so m or
so d wh nswe d ge
r e a n t i n e r yo g l y h o f t
sw -calle y. Ov
ne che g no ne m ead hose me me, en w rs t
ap
er
d
d
x
a
i
e
i
p
a
n
s
a
t
q
a
a
n
c
Th
be nd e, n kes ou ue
r ti file, best the
a ll f a c t s a y
a
s
s
m
t
p
o
t
i
y
s
m ye
i
t
t
s
sw qu us t s
l
o
ap
m e s te m n , o ys te m e t h o a r s w
e
f r e a o m e o io n h e we
e
n
file stio d vic orgo l con e t y f tim s tha
m
m
wo o r
e m it s m a d s ; e v
, a k n w t i m t t e cl u p e o e s t
a
the rse t y, fra or y own nag no sw e hea
a t a s a a s n a b si o n f
k
he
fir han gm , thr par ed fi ap rd a
b
s
p a o u t s a ll o u t u i s
t
e
fi
g e t h ov n t
wa A hu t tim know nted ee ti ition le, on le, fi ll the
me , t
y M ge
file e W er il t
e
,
i
the xed
n
i
d
.
m
w
a
re
g h ef s t
, a k in d ga h e
i
aro
o w r a g h e ic e t m a i
Th plem croso ason
a v ow i n .
s
m
e
e
com und
to
ir t s
e n ys te h e n
is t fac nte ft ha for a
k
ua
t
i
pu far l
ss ed m
l
the esta t so d vir s ta ll of
o
t
a g , it
com So w ing w nger
irl s
vir sub men many tual mckled this,
for
sce pre e de orld than
Wi tual mject i t in it peo em the is th
t ha
o
e
s
p
nd
op nari hens cided .
ow emo s, par self t le ca ry w ubje hist
tg
we tima os an ive lo it w
s s ry tic o h ll it ith ct a ori
en
l
a

era
c
i
.
inc ha ula ow
d
l
n
o
s
l
A
n
a
t
s
s
s
k
h
d
W
l
a
l
o
s
e
o n ee
ev
rly ba e w in
lly
b
a
l
e
b
u
t
o
g
er s ee
t
c
w
in t
a
d
u
d
w
j
r
i
u
o
t
l
o
t
l
o
st
ns me he w hich l the tim
ion n im hen y un ong ws
he
t
p
t
h
.
,
t
u
d
e
ha
ag
3.0 ple you er hin
i
d
a
e
p
f
w
y
i
s
all e fil ing t are with we any, ffer e to
an me con sto g
d h nte si od
be or if e. So le go imm som ll lea is ac ent ok a
d
as
f
y
a
r
t
n
be d in er
s
o ore, ouv o m l of ens e pr n a uall
en
to meth we t e ne atte gett ely h etty lot an y
pit set-u ing n hink ver e r if y ing a elpfu nove d as
jus falls p yo ew a your ven h ou th n opt l bey l
t d , to ur p lon e g ea ink im on
is
a m so
d
o
r
g
n h me age fi the ing t d of a you k ed
o
w
an
dy intrig le, ho ay. F lear page now
to
n
file it
kn uing w to a rom
ow tri
h
ab cks void t ow b
ou
e
t. that he us st
are ua
l

September 2009

PCF230.feature1 55

55

16/7/09 8:20:29 am

Optimise your swap file

When someone mentions swap file

or page file to you what are they talking
about? Well, technically Windows 9x
has a WIN386 swap file, while Windows
NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 use a PAGEFILE
file. You can see why the two phrases
are used interchangeably. However, the
confusion doesnt stop there. All of this
is connected to the Windows virtual
memory system, which is what were
really talking about here. Virtual
memory enables an OS to virtualise
the physical memory space to another
storage medium, usually a hard drive.
To do this both the kernel of an OS and
the processor its running on need to
support the function. Over 20 years
ago that might have been an issue, but
not today. The whole point is that when
an app requests a block of memory it
may see itself being given a block of
real memory. In reality only part, or
none at all, of this could be real with

memory as a whole. This enabled a

processor that could be limited to just
4MB of real physical memory to
address potentially gigabytes of
virtual memory, albeit with that data
store on a hard drive. Even today
systems with 2GB of memory can
easily require virtual memory and with
the majority of people running 32-bit
versions of Windows, 4GB is the
practical physical memory accessible.
So while this is a lot of memory, running
demanding apps, such as an email
client, productivity suite, image editing
software, virus checkers and so on
this can simply go.
So with virtual memory still an issue,
even for PCs with 4GB of physical
memory installed, the original question
still stands: What is the best
configuration for your Windows page
file, if you need one at all? The plan
here is to test a whole range of

Right Oops. Sorry

32-bit users youre
stuck with 4GB of
memory, less in fact

The virtual memory system works

on pages of 4K, which are swapped in
and out of real memory as a whole
the rest stored temporarily virtualised
on the hard drive. If an app requests
memory thats stored off in this virtual
world, a page fault is generated, the
virtual memory is swapped over to real
memory in chunks called pages and
everything carries on.
The primary reason why this is a
helpful thing is found back in the days
when the amount of real memory a
processor could access was limited to
mere megabytes. The virtual memory
system typically works on pages of 4K,
which are swapped in and out of real

56

PCF230.feature1 56

scenarios, some of them typical and

others not so ordinary to reveal the
optimal configuration for you.
Our first problem is just how to test
and benchmark the swap file. We want
to test a whole range of situations
from 1GB installs to 6GB installs. That
means a 64-bit Vista installation to
keep everything consistent. As we
need a low-memory situation well base
it on a 1GB Windows Vista installation.
To benchmark this well need
something thatll require a large block
of memory and manipulate that data.

To do that we run a benchmark that

creates a large image file in memory
and does various manipulations with it,
from simply scrolling it, to rotation. We
time how long it takes to complete
each stage and get results from
completing the image write and read,
and rotation speed timed in seconds
and MB/s depending on the operation.
You might have spotted something
here, isnt this just a drive-speed test?
Well, yes and no. We are testing the
speed of the swap file here, it just so
happens thats dependant on the speed
of the medium the swap file is stored
on, but still how the swap file is stored
is going to play a part, just as much as
what its stored on.

To the test chamber!

Below Access to the

page file gets pretty
hectic once memory
starts getting tight

To begin we need a control, which is

going to be a standard Windows Vista
64-bit installation with a managed
page file all running from the same
partition on a Hitachi 250GB Deskstar
drive. Well just install the OS, update
the drivers and let Windows manage
the page file in whatever manner it
sees fit. With just 1GB of memory the
system creates a 1.3GB page file and at
rest is using around 660MB of that
with little actually running. Checking up
on that file its already split into two
fragments. Under benchmark
conditions the page file increases to
3.2GB and has now fragmented into
five sections, remember this is on a
clean 250GB installation so there are
hundreds of gigabytes of empty space
to use. You can imagine how on a
real-life drive this fragmentation could
become far worse over time as the
available free space becomes limited.
This is the first of what are the
conventional spinning disk tests and
on the whole are what wed expect the
vast majority of people to be running.
The next four tests are all based on
different variations around single drive
and twin drive configurations. The

September 2009

16/7/09 8:20:42 am

Optimise your swap file

As weve described were creating a large image in memory and

manipulating it various ways, such as loading, saving, rotating and
scrolling it. Running on a 1GB system this far exceeds the available
free memory and forces Windows to rely on the page le for up to 3GB
of extra memory. We time how long each operation takes as we can see
how fast the system is at performing each one, plus the available
bandwidth the page le has. For every scenario we performed multiple
runs to help eliminate general system noise from the equation.

Technical analysis
benchmark results:
what they are and
what they mean
Enlarge

TIME IN SECONDS: QUICKER IS BETTER

6GB MEMORY - SMALL PAGE

3.24

6GB MEMORY - NO PAGE

RAM DRIVE
DEDICATED SSD

49.08

SSD COMPLETE INSTALL

60.65
116.16

SPLIT OVER 2 DRIVES

USER DEFINED

169.28

DEDICATED SATA DRIVE

119.94
183

DEDICATED PARTITION

185.61

WINDOWS MANAGED

20

Save

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

220

240

260

280

300

TIME IN SECONDS: QUICKER IS BETTER

10.36

6GB MEMORY - SMALL PAGE

11.18

6GB MEMORY - NO PAGE

RAM DRIVE

17.24

DEDICATED SSD

27.73

SSD COMPLETE INSTALL

32.36

SPLIT OVER 2 DRIVES

72.52

USER DEFINED

110.19

DEDICATED SATA DRIVE

58.97
118

DEDICATED PARTITION

105.3

WINDOWS MANAGED

20

Load

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

220

240

260

280

300

TIME IN SECONDS: QUICKER IS BETTER

6GB MEMORY - SMALL PAGE

10.91

6GB MEMORY - NO PAGE

11.51
11.81

RAM DRIVE
DEDICATED SSD

71.04

SSD COMPLETE INSTALL

46.07

SPLIT OVER 2 DRIVES

69.49
95.97

USER DEFINED

124.77

DEDICATED SATA DRIVE

DEDICATED PARTITION

118.36

WINDOWS MANAGED

122.04
20

Rotate

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

220

240

260

280

300

TIME IN SECONDS: QUICKER IS BETTER

8.56

6GB MEMORY - SMALL PAGE

10.63

6GB MEMORY - NO PAGE

16.21

RAM DRIVE

102.37

DEDICATED SSD
SSD COMPLETE INSTALL

110.69

SPLIT OVER 2 DRIVES

218.39

USER DEFINED

239.39

DEDICATED SATA DRIVE

241.02
255.6

DEDICATED PARTITION

258.29

WINDOWS MANAGED

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

220

240

260

280

300

September 2009

PCF230.feature1 57

57

16/7/09 8:20:51 am

Optimise your swap file

obvious first test is to run a userdefined, fixed-sized page file, this is

the option that tends to be most
favoured by people and the thinking
behind it makes a lot of sense; creating
a fixed page file when Windows is first
installed eliminates the chance of
fragmentation so provides an optimal
single continuous file. If you make this
large enough then apart from losing a
few gigabytes of drive space theres no
real downside.
Our next scenario runs along the
same lines but does so with the page
file stored on its own partition on the
same drive. This has been suggested as
an optimal solution, but it has been
pointed out that this unnecessarily
encourages excessive amounts of
drive head thrashing. As it ends up with
the page file being physically removed
from the working data. This certainly
rings true for us, wed imagine in
certain situations it would be fine for
large sequential writes and reads to
the page file, but in reality wed imagine
this is less the case particularly when
multitasking. Unfortunately, this is one
area our benchmark wont test very
strongly, but we can see how it
performs under our heavy single
memory load.
Scenario four is running the page file
off a secondary SATA hard drive.
Before you get up in arms, its a similar
250GB 7,200rpm Hitachi Deskstar
made within six months of the other
drive, so raw performance should be
very similar. Otherwise were running a
fixed user-defined page file as per the
other scenarios. Wed expect
performance here to be among the
best of the spinning disk test as the

A xed result

dedicated SATA line will help eliminate

drive thrashing due to separating the
page file and system access to the
drive. This leads on to the final scenario
which was added more as an
intellectual test. We were interested to
see if running two page files over two
drives enabled Windows to perform
any sort of intelligent cacheing or even
RAID style spanning. If it balances
storage against spare access capacity
that could offer some benefits and the
Microsoft Knowledge Base article
seems to allude to that sort of practice.

A solid answer

After testing were glad to see that

indeed our preferred user-fixed page
file certainly performed well. To our
surprise it outperformed the
dedicated drive to a small degree in
some tests, but it was certainly
outpaced in others by the dedicated
drive; the most notable being the save
test. That aside it completed a number
of tests 20 to 25 seconds quicker than
the managed option. The big surprise is
that the split page file was the one that
really performed best overall. As youd
expect it at least matched the
dedicated drive option in most cases,
but in others certainly pulls out a good
lead over the user-defined and
dedicated drives options. While we
have no direct reason for why this
should be the case, as weve mentioned
Microsoft alludes to the fact Windows
does intelligently spread the load
across multiple page files, depending
on which drives are used the least. No
matter whether thats done historically
or on the fly, something seems to be
working and for the majority of users

When it came to our spinning disk

results we were somewhat surprised
and also vindicated. Its obvious that a
Windows managed page le is by far
the slowest option to choose. The
benchmark in itself may not be wholly
real-world centric, we are testing the
Windows managed scenario in the best
possible conditions, as far as its
concerned at any rate. So with it
running up to 70 seconds slower than
the fastest spinning disk scenarios
thats a potential real drag, even more
so under potentially more fragmented
conditions. Its also clear the xed
same-drive partition solution isnt a
good choice either; any advantage
gained by the guaranteed
defragmentation is then lost by the
physical partition separation and
increase in drive head seek times, at
58

PCF230.feature1 58

Above The best way

to store your page file
is in a single
defragmented state

least being no better than a system

managed option.
Wed also contest the idea that
turning the page le off on a highmemory system helps improve
performance. Our results actually
point, if anything, to the opposite,
while turning off the virtual memory
makes a system vulnerable to a
low-memory situation that can cause
apps to crash and deny Windows the
ability to create memory dumps in
crash situations. Something that
strikes us as a lose-lose-lose situation.
Previously weve always
recommended a xed page le as the
most sensible option. Windows enables
you to specify a minimum size and a
maximum, so it makes sense to create
a large minimum size that youre
happy with. Wed recommend at least

wed imagine is the optimum and most

achievable solution.
As much as we love our spinning
hard drive friends and their penchant
for storing grotesque amounts of
video in all of its many fleshy forms,
theyre still damn slow. Those mirrored
spinning surfaces may look shiny and
attractive but get too close and the
horrific realisation that their access
times can be measured in geological
ages claws at our souls as much as our
own reflected twisted images. Which is
to say theyre a bit slow. While still
expensive in comparison to spinning
disks you can certainly pick up 32GB
solid state drives for under 100 now
and even the more recent 80GB drives
are slipping into the 200 price
bracket. This definitely puts a solid
state boot-drive solution into the price
range of most people. The question is
whats the impact of this technology on
page file performance?

2GB or better yet 4GB and then choose

a larger maximum in case of
emergencies, either 6GB or 8GB. Plus in
light of our results if you can do this
over two different drives then thats
going to be even better, ensuring you
get the maximum speed out of your
creaking drives.

Switching off the page file quickly made our

benchmark throw up this error

September 2009

16/7/09 8:21:8 am

Optimise your swap file

Fixing the le

To get the most from your page le

youll need to know how to control it.
From Windows 95 to Windows 7, the
page le has always been controlled
through the Advanced settings section
of the System Properties Control Panel,
press [Windows] + [Break] to open this.
Vista and 7 users will also need to click
the Advanced system settings link. For
all versions of Windows XP/Vista/7 in
the Performance section click the
Settings button, choose the Advanced
tab and in the Virtual memory section
click the Change button.
Here youll see a list of all eligible
connected drives, what, if any, page le
they currently have and Windows own
recommendations. Windows Vista and
7 systems have an additional tick box
at the top of the dialogue box that
forces a system managed page le and
will need to be cleared. Selecting each
drive enables you to create a customdened page le, enable Windows to
We decided to run two scenarios, as
weve already established that a
user-defined fixed page file is the way
to go, the two options we want to test
are with a full Windows installation and
as a plain drive with a fixed page file on
it. As youd hope the up-to-date solid
state architecture efficiently smothers

manage its own le or to force no page

le at all. The important thing is to
make sure you click the Set button
after each selection, otherwise any
changes wont be permanent.
Windows has a couple of foibles that
are worth pointing out. By default itll
create its system managed page le on
the boot drive and itll opt for 1.5 times
the physical memory, moving up to
three times this depending on the
memory loads. It wont take advantage
of other partitions or drives with more
space. This is particularly odd when
you consider that even Microsoft
admits this isnt an optimal
conguration over at this Knowledge
Base article support.microsoft.com/
kb/314482. It advises that running the
page le on a separate hard drive is a
better option, but it does go on to state
that a page le on the boot drive is also
required for error logging. While
alongside of this Windows has its own

algorithms for determining which

drives are used least and will priorities
those for page le usage over other
partitions or drives.

Clearly the fastest scenario will be

running without any page file at all,
right? It appears not. By accident we
actually left the page file on and ran
the benchmark cycle. Spotting our
mistake we reran the test with the
page file off, to discover it was slower.
Only slightly slower, but still slower.

Clearly the fastest scenario will be

running without any page file at all,
right? It appears not
the randomness of the mechanical
drives, in most cases yielding double
the performance, with a halving in most
times and a three-fold increase in
throughput on the scroll test. As youd
also expect the dedicated driver option
also offered a little improvement in
performance, though the sheer
efficiency of the solid state access
system meant the Windows managed
file was almost as efficient.

Stacks of memory

We finally come to that scenario weve

seen a lot of people with a sizeable
compliment of RAM touting: turning
off virtual memory and doing away
with a page file. What we would like to
know is just how good a thing it is! To
answer these final questions we took a
high-memory system that involved
installing 6GB of memory into our
64-bit test system.

Either way the results are still

staggering in terms of the speed
increase over any dependency on using
the page file, its a ten-fold reduction in
wait times and a 40-fold increase in
throughput over even the solid state
drives, never mind the 100-fold plus
increase in throughput over the
spinning disks. Again, more from
interest than any practical solution we
created a 5GB RAM drive and created
a fixed page file within this to see what
type of overhead that would impose.
It pretty much halved the throughput
speed showing there is something of
an overhead involved with simply
running the page file, but in context of
the slow drives its normally stored on
thats not usually an issue.
So what have we learnt? Clearly
having lots of memory is a great thing,
if you can eliminate the need for
Windows to use the page file your life

This simple system setting has served us

proud for many a year

is going to be much improved. Having

no page file, while it might seem clever
on the face of it could slow things down
ever so slightly and if you do ever hit a
low-memory situation its going to
cause problems. The page file is also
used as a dump area if a crash occurs,
turning it off eliminates that feature.
We can see anyone with a solid state
drive is going to be fine either with a
managed or fixed page file. For the rest
of us the best solution is to opt for a
user-fixed page file and as many people
more than likely have a second drive,
choose to store two user-fixed page
files on both drives. If swapping does
occur at least this should keep times to
a minimum.

Right Here we see

PCMark giving up
when the page file
is turned off

September 2009

PCF230.feature1 59

59

16/7/09 8:21:22 am