Smart Trim and video games

[Jibroni]

If I have a problem with my video games stuttering or freezing every five seconds and it is due to an issue with virtual memory or ram, perhaps because the game keeps ending up using page file memory, would Smart Trim be able to mitigate this problem?

[edkiefer]

If I have a problem with my video games stuttering or freezing every five seconds and it is due to an issue with virtual memory or ram, perhaps because the game keeps ending up using page file memory, would Smart Trim be able to mitigate this problem?

If you're running out of free memory, then it might help, try it and see.
You also might want to exclude the game in smarttrim config options.

[Jibroni]

If you're running out of free memory, then it might help, try it and see.
You also might want to exclude the game in smarttrim config options.

Ok cool, yeah its not me per se but its someone I'm trying to help. He says he keeps having to increase his virtual memory and restarting it everytime or the micro freezing eventually comes back. He gets messages like ' running out of memory' sometimes.

[Skrell]

Ok cool, yeah its not me per se but its someone I'm trying to help. He says he keeps having to increase his virtual memory and restarting it everytime or the micro freezing eventually comes back. He gets messages like ' running out of memory' sometimes.

I get this error message too but usually it seems related to running Waterfox for too long.  How much RAM does your friend have(I have 16GB)?  I have my page file setting manually configured to small range of values (200->1024) and I'm wondering if that's part of my problem?

[Jeremy Collake]

Skrell, you definitely need a larger page file. Let the system manage its size, and make sure you keep some free disk space available for it to grow.

SmartTrim can help with RAM use in some circumstances, but total virtual memory use (the larger issue) can not be artificially reduced without closing whatever apps are consuming so much memory.

In some cases, certain web sites left open can cause browsers to endlessly consume memory.

SmartTrim can help to proactively page out unused virtually memory (though it would eventually get paged out anyway), but memory that is actively referenced will get tossed right back into RAM.

Use of SmartTrim should be conservative. You want your RAM to be fully utilized by important apps and cache since it is the fastest storage you have.

[Skrell]

Skrell, you definitely need a larger page file. Let the system manage its size, and make sure you keep some free disk space available for it to grow.

SmartTrim can help with RAM use in some circumstances, but total virtual memory use (the larger issue) can not be artificially reduced without closing whatever apps are consuming so much memory.

In some cases, certain web sites left open can cause browsers to endlessly consume memory.

SmartTrim can help to proactively page out unused virtually memory (though it would eventually get paged out anyway), but memory that is actively referenced will get tossed right back into RAM.

Use of SmartTrim should be conservative. You want your RAM to be fully utilized by important apps and cache since it is the fastest storage you have.

So then when would one want to manually force a page file size?  I have an SSD and 16GB of RAM so I would think I'd want to minimize the use of a page file as 1. I should have plenty of RAM (which I guess I don't) and 2. You want to minimize transactions to the SSD so it'll wear out less quickly. 
I guess in my misunderstanding I was doing that by forcing a small page file.   Please straighten me out!

[Jeremy Collake]

Almost never is it a good idea to set the
page file size yourself. However, you might want to manually set the size of your page files if you desired them particularly distributed over several drives.

You might even cause more paging activity (disk writes) with an insufficiently sized page file, as Windows struggles to manage with it.

Unused RAM won't get paged out of there is nowhere to put it, causing excessive RAM use, impeding performance and caching.

And, as you have found, when you run out of virtual memory, Windows can't simply expand the page file when you have set it up a fixed size. No free memory can lead to app and/or system shutdown.

Worrying about SSD wear will drive you crazy, and modern SSDs do great at wear-leveling and cells have greater edurance than they used to. Do the math on a worst case load and you should find your SSD will last longer than you will ever need it to. I haven't ever had one fail or degrade in performance. It just isn't an issue.

[swambast]

I found this thread interesting and wanted to solicit some advice that was fairly on topic.  I have two Samsung SSDs in my computer, and set a custom page file with an initial size of 4096MB and max size of 6144MB on my main Windows/OS drive.  Full specs are below (yes I know my computer's quite outdated but she still manages to handle just about anything I can throw at it).  But is this page file advisable or what other recommendations might you suggest?

Cooler Master HAF 932 Full Tower Case
OCZ Fatality 750W Modular Power Supply w/4 dedicated +12V Rails at 80 plus bronze
ASUS SABERTOOTH Z77 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel i7-3770k LGA 1055 Ivy Bridge Unlocked CPU at stock 3.5Ghz w/max Turbo Frequency of 3.9Ghz
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler
High-performance 8GB Vengeance Dual Channel Memory Kit, 1600MHz, 8-8-8-24, 1.5V
EVGA SuperClocked GTX 660 Ti with 980MHz Core Clock and 1059MHz Boost Clock
SSD Drives:  Samsung 840 PRO Series 256GB for Windows/OS and a Samsung SSD 850 EVO Series 1TB for Games
Storage:  2x2TB Seagate Barracuda Hard Drives w/64MB Cache @7200 RPM in Raid 0
Operating System:  Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit Version

[edkiefer]

It depends on what software your running, 8 gigs with 6k page might hit the limit, you might be better with OS controlled page file.
If you really want to tweak setting you would have to run the most demanding app that you plan on running and then check how much memory overhead you have left and adjust from there.
The page file size is very dependent on memory amount and applications running.