MyDoggieJessie (3/15/2013)
There's really no need to have 8 tempdb data files until you're experiencing tempdb contention and then I would suggest only adding 1 new file at a time to see if things improve.
I would usually recommend doubling the files when there's contention identified (allocation contention that is), so 1->2->4->8 and so on
If you split out all your space across smaller data files you may run into issues with command DBCC operations like CHECKDB not having enough space available in your tempdb data files to perform CHECKTABLE on your larger tables
Why? TempDB files, like user database files, are used with a proportional fill algorithm, so there's no difference between 2 files of 140GB and 4 files of 70GB, it's still 280GB total space.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability