5 ms·

Doesn't Windows, like macOS, automatically expand swap? You can't run out of memory nearly as quickly as you can on Linux. And at least on Windows I always figu

by wahern 29d ago

Doesn't Windows, like macOS, automatically expand swap? You can't run out of memory nearly as quickly as you can on Linux. And at least on Windows I always figured this is why it felt so sluggish under load--it ends up paging alot. Not sure why macOS has always felt more consistent; perhaps the OS and major apps are less gratuitous memory hogs?

MartinodF 29d ago
If you're referring to Apple Silicon, my intuition is that the SoC design allows for higher bandwidth between SSD and RAM which reduces the performance impact of paging. I might be totally wrong though
da_chicken 28d ago
In Windows 9x (95/98/ME) the swap file could expand indefinitely, with no mechanism to limit its size. Under Windows NT 4.0, Win2k, or WinXP and on, the page file has a built-in size limit that you can set. You can indirectly force that minimum size to increase if you enable full memory dump capture in the event of a crash (it must be larger than main memory to do that) and that was really easy to do so I think a lot of people made that mistake. Even on the modern Windows, if you have a crash then the system will automatically enable full memory dumps for the next 4 weeks hoping to be able to debug the second crash. That can also result in the minimum size increasing beyond the maximum you set, but in neither case does it grow indefinitely. Eventually the OS will start returning an error that it's out of memory or out of virtual memory. But if the application you're running can handle that gracefully, then it may not even crash. I think Windows is sluggish now in part because it's about 5 or 6 layers of abstractions piled on top of each other between the application and the hardware, and also because Microsoft keeps jamming services and side projects onto you. It's been a long time since Microsoft has adopted the "shut up and get out of the user's way" approach to OS design. Now it loves to distract you from the program you're working in.

by wahern 29d ago

MartinodF 29d ago

If you're referring to Apple Silicon, my intuition is that the SoC design allows for higher bandwidth between SSD and RAM which reduces the performance impact of paging. I might be totally wrong though

da_chicken 28d ago

In Windows 9x (95/98/ME) the swap file could expand indefinitely, with no mechanism to limit its size. Under Windows NT 4.0, Win2k, or WinXP and on, the page file has a built-in size limit that you can set. You can indirectly force that minimum size to increase if you enable full memory dump capture in the event of a crash (it must be larger than main memory to do that) and that was really easy to do so I think a lot of people made that mistake. Even on the modern Windows, if you have a crash then the system will automatically enable full memory dumps for the next 4 weeks hoping to be able to debug the second crash. That can also result in the minimum size increasing beyond the maximum you set, but in neither case does it grow indefinitely. Eventually the OS will start returning an error that it's out of memory or out of virtual memory. But if the application you're running can handle that gracefully, then it may not even crash. I think Windows is sluggish now in part because it's about 5 or 6 layers of abstractions piled on top of each other between the application and the hardware, and also because Microsoft keeps jamming services and side projects onto you. It's been a long time since Microsoft has adopted the "shut up and get out of the user's way" approach to OS design. Now it loves to distract you from the program you're working in.