I don't know if this was improved in W8 or W10, but in W7 and before the paging algorithm in the NT kernel was definitely subpar, having a pagefile always reduc

I don't know if this was improved in W8 or W10, but in W7 and before the paging algorithm in the NT kernel was definitely subpar, having a pagefile always reduced performance, because applications in the background would be swapped out even if plenty of RAM was available, so going back to an application meant that it was unresponsive until the kernel swapped it back in.