Myth - "Enabling LargeSystemCache improves desktop/workstation performance."
Reality - "LargeSystemCache determines whether the system maintains a standard size or a large size file system cache, and influences how often the system writes changed pages to disk. Increasing the size of the file system cache generally improves file server performance, but it reduces the physical memory space available to applications and services. Similarly, writing system data less frequently minimizes use of the disk subsystem, but the changed pages occupy memory that might otherwise be used by applications. On workstations this increases paging and causes longer delays whenever you start a new app. Simply put enable this on a file server and disable it on everything else."
"System cache mode is designed for use with Windows server products that act as servers. System cache mode is also designed for limited use with Windows XP, when you use Windows XP as a file server. This mode is not designed for everyday desktop use. When you enable System cache mode on a computer that uses Unified Memory Architecture (UMA)-based video hardware or an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), you may experience a severe and random decrease in performance. For example, this decrease in performance can include very slow system performance, stop errors, an inability to start the computer, devices or applications that do not load, and system instability. The drivers for these components consume a large part of the remaining application memory when they are initialized during startup. Also, in this scenario, the system may have insufficient RAM when the following conditions occur:
- Other drivers and desktop user services request additional resources.
- Desktop users transfer large files.
By default LargeSystemCache is disabled in Microsoft Windows XP."
I'm going to do that page file on my D drive option. I hope the above info helps resolve your idea of increasing the L2.