got a sql server, Dell 6650, 4 x 3Ghz xeons, just installed additional 4Gb of RAM so there is now total of 8Gb. After this system only shows 7.25Gb in system properties and 7.4Gb in system information. But that's not the problem. I turned on all the appropriate switches (boot.ini - /PAE /3GB) And then I enabled AWE using the sp_configure procedure. I have 2 SQL instances on that server. one I set to use 4Gb (dynamic) and the other less busy one to 2Gb (dynamic). I noticed a huge paging file usage after that and performance degraded significantly. After playing around for a while I noticed that when I set noticed that if I set memory to be over 3071Mb it starts using the paging file (paging file jumps by the same amount of RAM and physical memory is not being used). And if I set it to less than 3071Mb then the paging file stays normal however the performance increase I was looking for is still not there. In fact even though I was able to figure out how to temporarily resolve the paging file issue the queries I was running before that took 40-60 seconds before now run for about 2 minutes.
1. Why is the paging file being used when set to over 3Gb?
2. Why am I not seeing better performance with twice the RAM than before? (considering AWE is enabled)
1. Why is the paging file being used when set to over 3Gb?
2. Why am I not seeing better performance with twice the RAM than before? (considering AWE is enabled)