Re: RAM & swap file (paging file)

[Sven Napolean Montessori <snm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

   Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 18:34:50 +0000
   From: Justin Fanning <Justin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


   All the guys I know in IT swear by the rule of thumb, (min) swap size = 
   RAM x 2.

That is an ancient and out of date nobrainer rule.  That rule was
created in the days of little RAM (i.e. 640k is enough for anyone) and
small harddrives of 5 to 10M.

You need as much effective RAM as your programs require, a serious
number crunching program can easily eat up 10 times the installed
RAM.  On the other hand, most machines with 1G of RAM nowdays should
never swap, as commonly available programs use far less memory.  There
are plenty of swapless systems happily running as corporate servers.

Put as much hispeed RAM into the system as is possible, far better
than buying a DVD writer or other rarely used overpriced hardware.