Page File question

[DEHawk]

Hello,
A while back when I was building my new computer someone suggested then when installing my new hard drives/ Operating system that I make a separate partition for the page file, does this sound correct? Well if so how do I do this? How big should I make the partition?
What are the benefits of doing this?
Next in the near future (when I revive the software) I am going to upgrade my operating system from Windows XP Pro 32 bit to Vista Ultimate 64 bit. Can I/ should I do this when I upgrade?

Here are my system specs
EVGA NForce 680i SLI 122-CK-NF68-A1
4GB of Corsair RAM Dominator CM2x1024-8500C5D
2 DVD/CD DUAL Layer Drives both IDE
Razer Barracuda AC-1 soundcard
Tagan Pipe Rock 1100 watt power supply
Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 2.40 GHz, 8 MB L2 Cache total, 1066 MHz FSB
Windows XP PRO
XFX 8800 GTS 640mb video card
1 Samsung 160 GB Hard Drive (Operating System)
2 Western Digital 500GB Hard Drives
Custom Built CPU Watercooling System

Thanks

[S Templar]

Some say yes moving the pagefile to a separate partition improves performance.
Other say no..let Windows manage the pagefile as it knows when it needs to use it.
I use to tinker with pagefile now I let Windows do it's thing.
But as always it's users choice.

Link below says move the pagefile to a separate drive.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...partition.mspx

Upgrade Xp-Vista.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...deadvisor.mspx
http://www.computerperformance.co.uk...ta_install.htm

[cauzomb]

Try to upgrade to a faster CPU, maybe even go with dual core instead of qaud, and faster video card such as a single 8800ultra, or the dual 9800g series, one 640mb 8800gts is pretty fast, but will be processor limmited on the Q6600 unless you are overclocking. Quads don't like to overclock as well as a core2 duo on the 680i paltform. A dual core 6850 OC'd to 3.6GHz gets good numbers on a single 8800gts, SLI seams to drop in performance benchmarks, but over-all game play on some games is smoother with sli, even on a slower CPU clock of 2.4Ghz, but with two 8800gts's on my 680i sli rig, things start to slow down durring graphics intensive games with lots of things going on at once.

[cauzomb]

Regarding your page file, to increase performance, try using another HD on a different I/O channel. If your system can access both channels simultaniously, the Input/output and access times can be reduced between paging read/writes and accessing application and system data from the other drive. Other than that, unless you have specific application needs for a larger scratch disc, or other custom memory settings, you can allow windows to manage the page file.

[syxguns]

Basically a page file is your virtual memory. Normally Windows will create a page file that is approximately half of the size of your memory installed. What is comes down to is if you are in need of that much virtual memory. If you are not running programs that exhaust your actual memory and have at least 2 gigs of RAM installed, then you are probably not even using a portion of the page file.

Having a page file on a separate disk is a good thing to help speed up performance of the machine. Many people use multiple paging files on different HDD's on their systems. Here is a link that will explain it in greater detail: http://www.theeldergeek.com/paging_file.htm