Win 7 64 still needs virtual memory?

I use a Win 7 64 system with 24 GB of RAM. Should I deactivate virtual memory for Win to gain performance?
I cannot imagine that it makes sense to swap data from memory to disk if there is enough RAM.
If swapping still is needed or at least recommended: What file size would you suggest?

Best regards
Stefan

Nitpicking: You can NOT deactivate virtual memory. You must be taking about paging file.

You can disable paging file, if you want. The amount of memory you have should be enough to handle almost anything without paging. But disabling it shouldn’t lead to any meanigful performance boost. On the other hand disabling paging file is dangerous: in the case you’ll run out of RAM, your program(s) just crash. With paging file they just slow down and you’ll probably realise you’ve gone too far before the accident happens.

Yes, you are right. Thank you for clarification, Jarno.
I am just wondering why Win uses paging even if there is plenty of free memory. Task man shows 85% of kernel mem (720 MB) is swapped, while 14+ GB of RAM are free…

Not knowing Windows’ memory management algorithm details I can only guess: Windows is rather reserving free memory for disk cache instead of keeping unused parts of the system in RAM.

And when it comes to values shown at Task Manager, I’m not even sure what they really tell you. I think you’re talking about “Kernel Memory: Paged”, right?
Is this

  1. amount of kernel swapped out to paging file
    or
  2. amount of kernel memory, which CAN be swapped out to paging file

My guess is #2