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I have a weird problem. I enabled AWE on a Sql 2000 sitting on a Windows 2003 server. The server has 20 gigs of memory but when i enable AWE sql process is showing as having only 128 MB. From perfmon however looks like a bit part of memory is being allocated to a process (i think it's SQL).

However SQL runs slower with AWE then without it. Has anyone got any ideea ?

Paul
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2 Answers2

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sql process is showing as having only 128 MB

You have checked it with Task Manager? It's Task Manager limitation (bug) and you shouldn't belive in such numbers.

Performance monitor will show you correct data (use SQL Server:Memory Manager counters)

Sergey
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  • From http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907877: 'Performance Monitor (PerfMon) and Task Manager do not account for memory correctly if Address Windowing Extentions (AWE) support is enabled' – Remus Rusanu Oct 02 '09 at 18:25
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For fear of losing performance with AWE/PAE and hyperthreading, I did extensive (for me) tests using SQL. I quickly got into the weeds with varying query types, but I did gather some evidence that AWE/PAE may be worse for queries using large amounts of I/O. Other queries that benefit from >2GB memory for caching were better. What does one do? If your box is running a variety of queries, you can't restart with a new config in between! We went with it, and then x64 came along and laid the matter to rest.

Dennis Williamson
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JamesR
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