Want to increase you're in-game FPS?

[Falkor]

This is just 2 things I've done which have made a big difference to my FPS.

1) Disable or reduce the size of you're windows paging file.
The windows paging file uses you're hard disk as a kinda of virtual memory for reading and writing data during game play. Wow is very hard disk intensive and having to use the same hard disk to read and write virtual memory + load in game objects and items can cause you're FPS to suffer.
By simple removing OR limiting you're paging file in windows to Lower(256) Upper(256) you "MAY" notice a FPS increase depending on you're hardware.
"PLEASE NOTE: I don't advise you try this on systems with less then 2GB memory for Windows XP or 3GB memory for vista"


2) Have windows media player open while you are playing Wow.
Now you're properly going to say "hold on a minute, its not Aprils fools day yet..." well this is actually a documented fact that windows media player can help to increase you're FPS by up to double what you're currently getting.
Again this is all hardware dependant and I do not guarantee an FPS increase.

Here's a link to more information as to "How" this helps: Wikipedia ('http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Class_Scheduler_Service')

and a snippet of the brief overview:

“Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (MMCSS) is a Windows service that boosts the CPU as well as I/O priority of a thread. It allows an application to get prioritized access to CPU for time-sensitive processing (such as multimedia applications) as well as prioritized disc access to ensure that the process is not starved of data to process. The MMCSS service monitors the CPU load and dynamically adjusts priority so that the application can use as much CPU time as possible without denying CPU to lower priority applications.”

Any questions or comments please let me know :)

[kadaan]

I am in-game FPS?







Sorry, couldn't resist :D

[Falkor]

I am in-game FPS?







Sorry, couldn't resist :D

I like to fully define my posts in order to stop the trolls from questioning the context in which the post was made :)

eg. Will this increase my windows fps?

[Ticks]

1) Disable or reduce the size of you're windows paging file.
The windows paging file uses you're hard disk as a kinda of virtual memory for reading and writing data during game play. Wow is very hard disk intensive and having to use the same hard disk to read and write virtual memory + load in game objects and items can cause you're FPS to suffer.
By simple removing OR limiting you're paging file in windows to Lower(256) Upper(256) you "MAY" notice a FPS increase depending on you're hardware.
"PLEASE NOTE: I don't advise you try this on systems with less then 2GB memory for Windows XP or 3GB memory for vista"

This is bad advice. You should learn how the Windows OS works before you give out advice.

[Basilikos]

I also am curious why you think disabling the page file would help performance. If you are actually using the page file, meaning you are swapping, and you disable it, things are going to start crashing, no? I think a better solution is to have the swap file and the wow directory (or any other disk intensive application directory, actually) on separate disks.

This. Like Bob said, if you're paging, you need the page file or worse things happen to your computer. If you're having trouble with framerates due to paging, upgrade your RAM.

[Falkor]

1) Disable or reduce the size of you're windows paging file.
The windows paging file uses you're hard disk as a kinda of virtual memory for reading and writing data during game play. Wow is very hard disk intensive and having to use the same hard disk to read and write virtual memory + load in game objects and items can cause you're FPS to suffer.
By simple removing OR limiting you're paging file in windows to Lower(256) Upper(256) you "MAY" notice a FPS increase depending on you're hardware.
"PLEASE NOTE: I don't advise you try this on systems with less then 2GB memory for Windows XP or 3GB memory for vista"

This is bad advice. You should learn how the Windows OS works before you give out advice.

I have to disagree 102% with you on this.
I'm a network engineer that works on windows servers and desktops all day long and have been for the past 6years.
Removing the page file completely I agree can cause some issues with certain applications, but limiting the page file size and stopping it from dynamically increasing DOES help you're system as a whole provided you have enough physical memory to cope.
I have done this on serveral gaming computers and laptops now all of which are running perfectly fine with no errors what so ever.
My work laptop running vista has no page file what so ever and 4GB of ram which I use on a daily basis with no issues, in fact vista is slightly faster in loading applications and games.....

Posting this is bad advice and not backing up you're statement is useless.
If you have a valid reason please reply with a constructive comment and I'll be happy to listen / discuss.

[Falkor]

I also am curious why you think disabling the page file would help performance. If you are actually using the page file, meaning you are swapping, and you disable it, things are going to start crashing, no? I think a better solution is to have the swap file and the wow directory (or any other disk intensive application directory, actually) on separate disks.

This. Like Bob said, if you're paging, you need the page file or worse things happen to your computer. If you're having trouble with framerates due to paging, upgrade your RAM.

Upgrading you're ram does not help you're paging :)
You're paging file is a allocation of virtual memory that use's you're hard disk rather then you're physical ram.

[Kaynin]

Paging rocks on cheap-ass low ram computers, and can improve 'desktop' performance by miles, but isn't needed with sufficient ram. In my experience at least.

Fun fact, media player screws up my performance. I often enjoy having it play songs in the background and it really hammers my performance for some reason. (Or maybe I should just open and not play songs?)

[Falkor]

but isn't needed with sufficient ram.

As per my first post :) ^At least someone else knows what I'm talking about

[Falkor]

Fun fact, media player screws up my performance. I often enjoy having it play songs in the background and it really hammers my performance for some reason. (Or maybe I should just open and not play songs?)

Do you run a multi-core computer? From current research it would appear this only effects multi-core systems and in particular AMD processors.

[Kaynin]

Fun fact, media player screws up my performance. I often enjoy having it play songs in the background and it really hammers my performance for some reason. (Or maybe I should just open and not play songs?)

Do you run a multi-core computer? From current research it would appear this only effects multi-core systems and in particular AMD processors.

X9000 mobile core2xtreme (2 cores).

On my desktop PC (Q6600) I don't really notice a difference with or without media player turned on, although I'd have to check that again when I get home to do some testing. I mainly box on my laptop though and I know for a fact it's not improving for me there. :p

[Falkor]

Fun fact, media player screws up my performance. I often enjoy having it play songs in the background and it really hammers my performance for some reason. (Or maybe I should just open and not play songs?)

Do you run a multi-core computer? From current research it would appear this only effects multi-core systems and in particular AMD processors.

X9000 mobile core2xtreme (2 cores).

On my desktop PC (Q6600) I don't really notice a difference with or without media player turned on, although I'd have to check that again when I get home to do some testing. I mainly box on my laptop though and I know for a fact it's not improving for me there. :p

Both intel chips so this leads me to believe this either:
a) only effects AMD cores
b) you're graphics is already performing its max fps :)

[Kaynin]

It's very possible to be either or both. :P

1000 posts. O_o

[Falkor]

It's very possible to be either or both. :P

1000 posts. O_o


Gzzzzz

[Vicker]

I also am curious why you think disabling the page file would help performance. If you are actually using the page file, meaning you are swapping, and you disable it, things are going to start crashing, no? I think a better solution is to have the swap file and the wow directory (or any other disk intensive application directory, actually) on separate disks.

This. Like Bob said, if you're paging, you need the page file or worse things happen to your computer. If you're having trouble with framerates due to paging, upgrade your RAM.

Upgrading you're ram does not help you're paging :)
You're paging file is a allocation of virtual memory that use's you're hard disk rather then you're physical ram.

I am paging file? I am hard disk? I am physical ram?? Watch what you're saying. Some people might be insulted if you call them a paging file.

I think you missed the part where Bob mentioned that "you're" is a contraction for "you are".

[moosejaw]

There was a post in the official wow forums about the windows media player trick. IIRC it had to do the OS prioritizing things differently. If I can find the post I will link it up.
Wow forum post ('http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3271120397&sid=1')
Personally I have reduced the paging file size on my gaming machine(8gb ram) to 1gb. I tried to run without a paging file and there was tons of memory creep. My available ram would slowly shrink to less than 1 gb. When I enable the small page file, this stopped occuring. I guess the OS needs to write some addressing info to the page file, and if the page file isn't there maybe it writes it to physical ram?

[Hachoo]

This is a known fact that removing your paging file completely will actually reduce system performance. This happens on all operating systems, not just windows. You want at least a 100-500MB page file no matter what. I typically set mine to 512MB.

[Falkor]

When I enable the small page file, this stopped occuring. I guess the OS needs to write some addressing info to the page file, and if the page file isn't there maybe it writes it to physical ram?

Yep this is what I found out many months back, basically certain applications require a small paging file to process errors and pre-load components.
I found 256MB on both XP and Vista to be enough.

[Falkor]

This is a known fact that removing your paging file completely will actually reduce system performance. This happens on all operating systems, not just windows. You want at least a 100-500MB page file no matter what. I typically set mine to 512MB.

Not to disagree or cause an argument but my XPS laptop runs fine without a paging file :) Also the performance for games and applications is the same as before if not slightly better.

[Hachoo]

This is a known fact that removing your paging file completely will actually reduce system performance. This happens on all operating systems, not just windows. You want at least a 100-500MB page file no matter what. I typically set mine to 512MB.

Not to disagree or cause an argument but my XPS laptop runs fine without a paging file :) Also the performance for games and applications is the same as before if not slightly better.I'm not saying it won't run good, I'm saying it can and will eventually cause performance problems over having a small paging file. If you don't believe me go read the many articles from kernel developers and other big names in operating systems for information.

[Falkor]

This is a known fact that removing your paging file completely will actually reduce system performance. This happens on all operating systems, not just windows. You want at least a 100-500MB page file no matter what. I typically set mine to 512MB.

Not to disagree or cause an argument but my XPS laptop runs fine without a paging file :) Also the performance for games and applications is the same as before if not slightly better.I'm not saying it won't run good, I'm saying it can and will eventually cause performance problems over having a small paging file. If you don't believe me go read the many articles from kernel developers and other big names in operating systems for information.

I'm basing my facts here on experience rather then internet based articles which may be biast or have other reasons for saying this would cause problems.
I think we can agree though that unless you know what you are doing don't remove your paging file but rather make it smaller.

This is why I did not provide instructions how to do it as I don't want people just trying it without first understanding the implications :)

[blast3r]

but isn't needed with sufficient ram.

As per my first post :) ^At least someone else knows what I'm talking about

I think it depends on how many clients you are using. I don't think I would ever recommend not using a pagefile if you only have 2 gigs of memory and are running 5 wow clients. I think the number is around 8 gigs that makes it a viable option of not using a pagefile.

[Basilikos]

Upgrading you're ram does not help you're paging :)
I should have been more clear - I meant there needs to be more RAM in the machine to begin with. And yeah, I'll agree with you that letting the page file grow arbitrarily is a bad idea. Every computer I build has it's page file capped immediately after a windows installation.

[Catamer]

two things I like to do with the page file.
1.
if you have a second hard drive other than your boot drive put your page file on the second drive.
if you don't have a second drive then create a seperate partition on the hard drive ( and assign it dirve level P: for pagefile ) and put you pagefile on that partition ( do not use it for anything other than the pagefile )
2.
make you page file a fixed size instead of the growing version.

[king.pa]

I run vista 64 (6 month old) with 4 GB of ram... if I disable the pagefile I can only launch 3 wow.. when the 4 is launched and a toon loaded, all the wow colapse and they all need to quit because of the lack of ram ...

and I always had my Firefox launched with thousands of tabs (I love tabs, don't you ?)

So I'm now considering buying a new set of ram stick (2x4 GB) or 4x 2 GB .. but my system is O/C and I don't want to loose my 4 Ghz (471 FSB x 8.5 with a Quad Core Intel Q9550 on a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P, impressive cheap O/C board btw ('http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=3580641&postcount=1308') ) with a bad set of ram sticks, beside I read that two sticks works better than four...

But if I manage to get 8 GB of ram, I WILL remove my pagesys file.. for sure !!! or I'll put the pagesys on my raid0 volume.. but that the volume were I run my wow data .. having the data and the pagefile on the same drive isn't really a great idea...

So far, the best thing to do will be to buy four sticks of 4GB (near 110 € per stick) and have my wow data on a ramdrive ... :) but, again, with 4 GB of ram and the wow data on a raid0 (150 MB/sec on read outpout) is way enough to play well, but Dalaran is really a pain in the.... past 6pm and every WE.

I'll try to launch media player next time I play see if my fps are really boosted !!!

Edit : Hmm please excuse my faulty English, I stepped in a thread that is also related to english grammar... I'm improving myself everyday :whistling: but If I'm writing like a three years old kid, go ahead and correct me :) could be a good way to improve my 'English skills' without even respec :thumbsup:

[elsegundo]

what is the science/reason behind launching windows media player? sorry if this was already covered. there was a grammar lesson i had to sift through.

[Shaitan256]

btw, WB Falkor (!)

So The Pagefile (Just to get it clear) Is this Virtual Memory (direct Translation from German)? You can set under:
Control Panel
System
Advanced
Systemperformance (or something like that)

Edit: Thanks

Just want to be sure not that I do something different and my PC isn't working anymore.^^

Seems only to work if you have enough Ram. The thing with the WMP is an old tipp, but never really tried it, someone of my old raiding guiled told it, I said I don't give a crap because Single Boxing doesn't take so much performance (didn't even know boxing exists btw)

[Kaynin]

So The Pagefile (Just to get it clear) Is this Virtual Memory (direct Translation from German)?

Correct!

[Basilikos]

what is the science/reason behind launching windows media player? sorry if this was already covered. there was a grammar lesson i had to sift through.
There was a link in the original post that dealt with this subject.

[elsegundo]

what is the science/reason behind launching windows media player? sorry if this was already covered. there was a grammar lesson i had to sift through.
There was a link in the original post that dealt with this subject.thanks. i read that but it didnt really explain the "how". but well.. i'll have to reread it and try to understand the process.

[kadaan]

what is the science/reason behind launching windows media player? sorry if this was already covered. there was a grammar lesson i had to sift through.
There was a link in the original post that dealt with this subject.thanks. i read that but it didnt really explain the "how". but well.. i'll have to reread it and try to understand the process.I don't think very many people understand the "how", even after reading several articles on it. I just accept the TL;DR version which is "it has to do with windows memory/cpu allocation/reservation, and just opening WMP without playing anything frees up more system memory for WoW to use." I guess that's the slightly-long TL;DR version...

[pewshamanper]

2) Have windows media player open while you are playing Wow.
Now you're properly going to say "hold on a minute, its not Aprils fools day yet..." well this is actually a documented fact that windows media player can help to increase you're FPS by up to double what you're currently getting.
Again this is all hardware dependant and I do not guarantee an FPS increase.

Would this work for a mac with quicktime?

[BobGnarly]

I have to disagree 102% with you on this.
I'm a network engineer that works on windows servers and desktops all day long and have been for the past 6years.
Removing the page file completely I agree can cause some issues with certain applications, but limiting the page file size and stopping it from dynamically increasing DOES help you're system as a whole provided you have enough physical memory to cope.
I have done this on serveral gaming computers and laptops now all of which are running perfectly fine with no errors what so ever.
My work laptop running vista has no page file what so ever and 4GB of ram which I use on a daily basis with no issues, in fact vista is slightly faster in loading applications and games.....

Posting this is bad advice and not backing up you're statement is useless.
If you have a valid reason please reply with a constructive comment and I'll be happy to listen / discuss.I'll have to disagree with you. Here's why:

First of all, as I said, if you disabling paging and you run out of RAM bad things happen (applications crash or exit). If you run out of RAM with paging on, it probably doesn't run so hot, but it continues to run. I don't really know what "can cause issues with certain applications" means. It will cause problems with every application if you run out of RAM.

Second, disabling paging can actually cause your applications to consume more of your available memory. The reason is that if a program attempts to allocate a lot of memory which it may or may not use, if you have paging off, it has no option but to allocate it ALL out of system RAM. If paging is on, it can safely page the unused portion to disk where it can languish forever, and there is little to no impact on performance since that memory will never be faulted back into system RAM.

Third, even given both of these, I would conditionally agree with you except: my experiences have led me to conclude that any gains noticed on a system that isn't swapping (if your system IS swapping then you're crazy to have paging disabled) are minimal if any. This is where we'll have to agree to disagree, I guess.

So the way I see this, you are taking chances on bad things happening for a gain that I've never personally observed (and yes, I've tried - and yes, I have some experience in this field myself). And while you may never hit the upper end of your RAM, I and many others do. Start editing a few videos and you can easily consume 4G or more. Taking this chance might be OK for somebody who knows what they are biting off and knows what it'll look like when it happens (and how to fix it), but I don't agree that it should be recommended to people who might not have this type of experience.

[Svpernova09]

/Moderator note: I nuked the grammar BS out of this thread and moved it.

/on topic

I don't think opening quick time on a mac would do the same thing as WMP on a PC. I've never tried it, but the idea seems too silly for a mac.

[Nisch]

/Moderator note: I nuked the grammar BS out of this thread and moved it.

/on topic

I don't think opening quick time on a mac would do the same thing as WMP on a PC. I've never tried it, but the idea seems too silly for a mac.

The Media Player trick has to do with thread prioritization.

Here's an excerpt from another article:

“Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (MMCSS) is a Windows service that boosts the CPU as well as I/O priority of a thread. It allows an application to get prioritized access to CPU for time-sensitive processing (such as multimedia applications) as well as prioritized disc access to ensure that the process is not starved of data to process. The MMCSS service monitors the CPU load and dynamically adjusts priority so that the application can use as much CPU time as possible without denying CPU to lower priority applications.”

And I'm rather sure this applies to Vista only, and not XP. We went through this with AOC when people were trying to get higher FPS from that.

And the paging file disable is not a good idea IMO. I've been a systems administrator for years and have found that this trick causes more harm than good.

If you want better FPS..........get a better computer.

[Kaynin]

Disabling or lowering paging will help but you should monitor memory consumage. As long as you won't use up all your ram, you won't encounter problems.


If you disable your swap file and your ram consumage is 100%, problems will arise, yes. This is why the trick only works on computers with a lot of RAM. (ie. 8Gb+ ram for multiboxing 4-5 characters.). And even then I would advice to monitor ram at all times. :p

Then, as long as you don't reach the max, you will notice major performance increase..


PS! Important bit, if you run yoru swap file on a fast SSD or sorts, you won't need to do this trick really. Performance increase will be minimal then. But if you have slow HDD's... ;)

[weeep]

what is the science/reason behind launching windows media player? sorry if this was already covered. there was a grammar lesson i had to sift through.I know for sure that media player DOES affect system performance. My colleague noticed that his custom USB devices are communicating over USB with his software much faster if WMP is running in background. He did some research and found out that WMP greatly increases system timer precision on launch. Probably it leads to much smaller cpu time frames that system is assigning to each thread before contex switch occurs. For example, if thread's task processing takes 1ms on modern CPUs and default system time frame is 10ms, it means that 90% of your CPU time is wasted on waiting for next task. It is just an example, but I hope you get the idea how increasing timer precision may affect your performance.

As for disabling paging file, it usually DOES increase your system performance if you have enough RAM for all apps and file cache. It reduces your stability, because some apps won't be able to save error dumps on crash and some performance counters can randomly stop working, but if you are not intersted in examining crash dumps or performance counters, disabling page file is a good idea. Both my work and home computers are working with page file turned off for last 6 years, and I haven't noticed any errors except those that I've mentioned.
How disabling page file affects system performance. At least in Windows XP (I haven't worked in Vista with PF on, so it maybe better here) all your background apps become moved to page file after some time to free RAM for something else (maybe file cache?). Your slave WoW copies, your browser, etc are considered background if you constantly have your main WoW findow focused, so even if you are actively using them, the system thinks "oh! background apps! I should move them to disk!". And when they start reading data that was moved to disk, you experience lags and slowdowns even if you have enough RAM for all of them.
Personally I was tired of waiting 5-10 sec to switch from WoW to browser window just because Windows thought that browser was inactive and moved its memory contents to disk. I turned pagefile off and task switching became instant.

[Freddie]

I'm not saying it won't run good, I'm saying it can and will eventually cause performance problems over having a small paging file. If you don't believe me go read the many articles from kernel developers and other big names in operating systems for information.
I always believed this too but just last week I was surprised to see a comment by Pavel Lebedinsky who works on the memory manager portion of the operating system at Microsoft. He wrote:



3. Configuring a system with lots of RAM to run without pagefile may have either negative or positive perf impact depending on what the system is doing.
Lebedinsky has a lot of interesting things to say about Windows memory management but he says them in comments on other people's blogs so you have to look for them with Google.

Someplace else he points out that even if you disable the page file, Windows will still page (i.e. still do page faulting) because some virtual memory is backed by other files.

The quote is from a comment attached to this blog article about virtual memory by Mark Russinovich (which is very interesting in its own right):

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/11/17/3155406.aspx

[Golle]

For those of you with limited resources (not affecting the post above me) I would recommend a quick glance at this site:
http://kadaitcha.cx/performance.html

[elsegundo]

Thanks to everyone who replied about the MMCSS. its cleared up a few things and i kinda understand the "how" it works now. =]

[Falkor]

two things I like to do with the page file.
1.
if you have a second hard drive other than your boot drive put your page file on the second drive.
if you don't have a second drive then create a seperate partition on the hard drive ( and assign it dirve level P: for pagefile ) and put you pagefile on that partition ( do not use it for anything other than the pagefile )
2.
make you page file a fixed size instead of the growing version.

The partition idea is pretty pointless as your still accessing the same physical disk.
The first idea of using a separate drive combined with using a fixed size is acceptable :)

[Falkor]

what is the science/reason behind launching windows media player? sorry if this was already covered. there was a grammar lesson i had to sift through.


Read the wiki link as it will explain it better then I can, if you have any questions after reading that I'd be happy to assist.

[Falkor]

btw, WB Falkor (!)

So The Pagefile (Just to get it clear) Is this Virtual Memory (direct Translation from German)? You can set under:
Control Panel
System
Advanced
Systemperformance (or something like that)

Edit: Thanks

Just want to be sure not that I do something different and my PC isn't working anymore.^^

Seems only to work if you have enough Ram. The thing with the WMP is an old tipp, but never really tried it, someone of my old raiding guiled told it, I said I don't give a crap because Single Boxing doesn't take so much performance (didn't even know boxing exists btw)

Correct mate :) and you can't possible break your computer if your only capping your ram.
The only time you could cause issues is the removal but if you have more than enough ram to cover your operating system + wow you shouldn't see any problems :)

and cheers for the welcome back :)

[Falkor]

I have to disagree 102% with you on this.
I'm a network engineer that works on windows servers and desktops all day long and have been for the past 6years.
Removing the page file completely I agree can cause some issues with certain applications, but limiting the page file size and stopping it from dynamically increasing DOES help you're system as a whole provided you have enough physical memory to cope.
I have done this on serveral gaming computers and laptops now all of which are running perfectly fine with no errors what so ever.
My work laptop running vista has no page file what so ever and 4GB of ram which I use on a daily basis with no issues, in fact vista is slightly faster in loading applications and games.....

Posting this is bad advice and not backing up you're statement is useless.
If you have a valid reason please reply with a constructive comment and I'll be happy to listen / discuss.I'll have to disagree with you. Here's why:

First of all, as I said, if you disabling paging and you run out of RAM bad things happen (applications crash or exit). If you run out of RAM with paging on, it probably doesn't run so hot, but it continues to run. I don't really know what "can cause issues with certain applications" means. It will cause problems with every application if you run out of RAM.

Second, disabling paging can actually cause your applications to consume more of your available memory. The reason is that if a program attempts to allocate a lot of memory which it may or may not use, if you have paging off, it has no option but to allocate it ALL out of system RAM. If paging is on, it can safely page the unused portion to disk where it can languish forever, and there is little to no impact on performance since that memory will never be faulted back into system RAM.

Third, even given both of these, I would conditionally agree with you except: my experiences have led me to conclude that any gains noticed on a system that isn't swapping (if your system IS swapping then you're crazy to have paging disabled) are minimal if any. This is where we'll have to agree to disagree, I guess.

So the way I see this, you are taking chances on bad things happening for a gain that I've never personally observed (and yes, I've tried - and yes, I have some experience in this field myself). And while you may never hit the upper end of your RAM, I and many others do. Start editing a few videos and you can easily consume 4G or more. Taking this chance might be OK for somebody who knows what they are biting off and knows what it'll look like when it happens (and how to fix it), but I don't agree that it should be recommended to people who might not have this type of experience.

Now why didn't you post this as your last reply :)

I agree with you totally that if you use 100% of your system ram you will/can cause alot of problems which force applications and windows to crash.
But I'm posting this article without the "howto change your paging file" thus assuming <i know bad idea> that people who change their paging file will know what memory they are using :)

The same could be said about the windows default page file which auto expands.... what happens when your hard disk is full ;)

All taken into account this post has summed up that the safest option for anyone is simple to set a paging file limit rather then remove it and that windows media play "can" potentially help to increase fps and is a safer option to try.

This is all tweaking and if you really want to increase your FPS your best option is to buy a new gfx card. But there is alot of people that cannot simple spend £100/$200 just for the sake of improving a gaming experience.

[Falkor]

And I'm rather sure this applies to Vista only, and not XP. We went through this with AOC when people were trying to get higher FPS from that.


Confirmed / Tested / Working - Windows XP :)

[BobGnarly]

Now why didn't you post this as your last reply :)

I agree with you totally that if you use 100% of your system ram you will/can cause alot of problems which force applications and windows to crash.
But I'm posting this article without the "howto change your paging file" thus assuming <i know bad idea> that people who change their paging file will know what memory they are using :)

The same could be said about the windows default page file which auto expands.... what happens when your hard disk is full ;)

All taken into account this post has summed up that the safest option for anyone is simple to set a paging file limit rather then remove it and that windows media play "can" potentially help to increase fps and is a safer option to try.

This is all tweaking and if you really want to increase your FPS your best option is to buy a new gfx card. But there is alot of people that cannot simple spend £100/$200 just for the sake of improving a gaming experience.Well, I think I did. Maybe you're confusing me with the guy who told you to not give advice if you don't know what you're talking about, all I said is turning off paging when paging is happening is bad. And in fact, I even asked you why you thought that to make sure I understood you.

Oh and I teased you a little about grammar, but c'mon, I had a smiley there, and even a /duck. :)

Anyway, I think this thread accurately encapsulates the issue now, so on with our scheduled multiboxing. ;)

[Falkor]

Now why didn't you post this as your last reply :)

I agree with you totally that if you use 100% of your system ram you will/can cause alot of problems which force applications and windows to crash.
But I'm posting this article without the "howto change your paging file" thus assuming <i know bad idea> that people who change their paging file will know what memory they are using :)

The same could be said about the windows default page file which auto expands.... what happens when your hard disk is full ;)

All taken into account this post has summed up that the safest option for anyone is simple to set a paging file limit rather then remove it and that windows media play "can" potentially help to increase fps and is a safer option to try.

This is all tweaking and if you really want to increase your FPS your best option is to buy a new gfx card. But there is alot of people that cannot simple spend £100/$200 just for the sake of improving a gaming experience.Well, I think I did. Maybe you're confusing me with the guy who told you to not give advice if you don't know what you're talking about, all I said is turning off paging when paging is happening is bad. And in fact, I even asked you why you thought that to make sure I understood you.

Oh and I teased you a little about grammar, but c'mon, I had a smiley there, and even a /duck. :)

Anyway, I think this thread accurately encapsulates the issue now, so on with our scheduled multiboxing. ;)

Indeed you are correct my humble apologies :) 10g? lol

[Gnies]

I went in and changed my paging file to 512. vista had decided that 3 gigs was where it wanted this thing set. holy cow i got an increase of 5 fps while running around stormwind. btw im running 5 accts off one computer. I do have an AMD processor. thanks for the tip, much appreciated.

[Thulos]

I tried setting my virtual memory to 400mb min/max on my Vista 64 install with 8gb of memory and within 20 seconds of flying from dalaran with 5 shamans Vista had run out of 8gb of memory and closed all my wow's. All I have running is Firefox, WMP and 5 WoW's. I guess Vista is a fricking hog. I was shocked to see this happen. Going to play around with it more and see how bad wow is spiking.

Edit: Well I realized my farclip was set to 1k on each instance and flying through Icecrown with that big of a farclip has each wow client taking a gig of memory. So 5 gigs for wow and a bunch being used for the OS and other stuff. My total memory usage was just over 8gigs with those settings which would actually explain why it was paging beyond what I had allocated. I typically don't keep my farclip out on all instnaces but yesterday I was dualboxing so I had everything turned up more. Going to continue to play with this.

[Shaitan256]

After setting my Pagefile to 512MB (down from 3000+)only on my 2nd Hard Drive. I had no Problems in Cities, and did a little stress Test to my Comp:#
X2 5400+ Black Edition
4 GB Ram DDR2 800
4850HD Radeon 512MB
2x 7200 RPM HDD

Had 5 lvl 1 Gomes in IF and could run 1 House MD Episode from HD+ DvD drive (a german Comedian Show- Mario Barth Live) + Music (everything with VLC Player) + 2 Browsers open: Iron/Chromium (Google Chrome like) + Firefox Both with a lot YT Videos running on many Tabs.

What an increase :) Thanks for the Tip!!
XP32 btw

Tip of mine:
Set your Min and Maxfps right. It's insane if you do everything together what amount of performance could be get out of a Dual Core System, Gonna Add a second Monitor now^^

[Gizmo3k]

While we are talking about system performance, anyone got an opinion on Vista Readyboost (effectively using a USB drive or SD card as an additional cache)?

Is it any good? Is it worth it?

[Falkor]

While we are talking about system performance, anyone got an opinion on Vista Readyboost (effectively using a USB drive or SD card as an additional cache)?

Is it any good? Is it worth it?

Tried and tested but not really a performance increase I'm affraid.
The read/write speed on both usb and sd cards is substationally less then physical ram.

Although using a SATA Solid State Disk has made a big big improvement!!

[Moorea]

This is a known fact that removing your paging file completely will actually reduce system performance. This happens on all operating systems, not just windows. You want at least a 100-500MB page file no matter what. I typically set mine to 512MB.
Sorry but this is a load of crap.