You Can Tweak Virtual Memory Settings for Improved Performance

In the Windows 95/98 era, conventional wisdom held that you should manually set your virtual memory (i.e., pagefile) size to at least 1.5 times the amount of RAM in order to optimize performance. (By default, Windows will manage pagefile size on its own: You will likely find the initial pagefile size set to 0.5x or 1x the amount of RAM you have). We were skeptical about this tip, but our benchmarks surprised us: Some systems showed no change at all, but some (particularly older machines) showed substantial improvement beyond the usual random noise we see in benchmark results. We got at least a 10 percent jump after we upped the initial pagefile size to 2x the amount of RAM on two separate machines. It won’t work for all computers, so the jury’s still out on this one, but because it’s so easy to do and there are no negative consequences, it’s worth a shot just to see if it has any effect.

In the XP System Control Panel, click Advanced, then (under Performance) click Settings, Advanced. In the Virtual Memory module, click Change. Click Custom size then up both Initial and Maximum size to roughly double your amount of RAM. Click Set (important!), then OK out of all windows.

In Vista, click “Advanced system settings” in the System Control Panel and follow the same instructions.