Swap partition size (future proofing)

[Scot L. Harris]

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 at cfl.rr.com

Cow-tippers tipped a cow onto the server.