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So in the described scenario, what advantage does an ssd-backed pagefile has over a ramdisk-backed one? Assuming the same sizes.

Because the common recommendation is "you need at least a few GB swap". We can change the total ram amount to 64 or 128.

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A RAMDisk-backed page file removes useful RAM from the system. It's a net-negative. You're using RAM that would otherwise go towards useful things, like programs or file cache.

Again, if page file usage is a problem, you need more RAM, not less of it and certainly not allocating it to a RAMDisk.

What you're saying should make sense.

However:

32gb ram no pagefile: crashes

28gb + 2gb ramdisk pagefile: no crashes at all

32GB RAM + page file on disk also no crashes. Not all applications will function without a page file, as I said.

There's zero reason to use a RAMDisk for a page file. Stop listening to idiot gamers.

I don't care about ssd lifetime. This is purely an experiment. But you are inadvertently illustrating my point pretty well

I think you're under the false assumption that on Windows the page file is always being thrashed. That isn't how the VMM functions.

SSD "short" life span even from a bunch of 4KiB reads/writes is vastly overstated. Anyone who discusses the page file in terms of SSD lifetime is again, uninformed.

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