What is the correct way to use the swap file?

Question

Windows

Why do some say that you can use a paging file that is several times larger than the amount of RAM, and some say that you should not use even a slightly larger volume.
lenovo g570: 4 gigs of ram, buggy, always freezes after several hours of work, paging file - 3832 mb.
Of course, I understand that this mb will not help, but still I asked a good question

Answer 1

The golden rule: if you ask "why they say" - first you should always ask personally those who speak, and not someone else.
Another golden rule: 4GB of RAM is not enough for both modern software and modern operating systems. At any size of the swap file, because it does not replace RAM. So you, in any case, need to at least finish the volume up to eight. By limiting the size of the paging file to such microscopic numbers, you doom yourself to a situation where both the OS and the software are forced to constantly read data from files stored on the disk, spending extra resources on turning them into data structures, etc., and then freeing up memory , and repeat the process over and over for any sneeze.
A slightly less golden, but also very important rule: if you don’t know why a particular setting is in Windows, don’t touch it. After installation, the size of the paging file in the settings is set to "automatic", so return this setting to this state. Why? Because Windows does a pretty good job of managing memory if left unchecked. Setting the size limit is not for the notorious "optimization" (do you think the Windows developers would have made it so that the paging file would be set to the same size as RAM if it were beneficial for performance?), but for cases where you need to be guaranteed to have free disk space. If some "guru" claims otherwise, he has a pretty fantastic idea of ​​how memory works in Windows, and don't listen to him.