On Tue, 2005-02-01 at 03:22, David Fletcher wrote: > Suggested swap partition sizes from the archives range from the same size as > the RAM to twice the size of the RAM. > > Given that I'm going to start with 1G of RAM, but could (but maybe won't) end > up with 4G of RAM, I'm thinking that maybe 6G would be a sensible size for > the swap partition. I think that old rule of thumb is less valid now than it used to be when we had systems that had 512K of memory. Anymore, swap space is kind of an emergency use kind of thing. If your system starts using any significant amount of swap space you will immediately see performance problems. As such it is best to size your memory to handle the applications you plan to use. Personally I don't think it makes much sense in most cases (not all) to have more than about 1GB of swap space on a system. Again this rule of thumb I have used for many years is some what dated now that disk drives are so large and relatively cheap. It does not cost as much anymore to waste huge amounts of disk on swap. If you are trying to get performance out of the system in general more memory will work better. You may also want to check into potential performance gains you may see by using multiple memory chips instead of one large one. Many motherboards make better use of multiple chips instead of one large one. -- Scot L. Harris webid@xxxxxxxxxx Cow-tippers tipped a cow onto the server.
