RAM & Swap & Speed

[herbert langhans]

Hi Jon,
all kosher here, I have my FreeBSD workstation and will put some more RAM into it. Just found it out on a penguin..

Honestly, I would never think that adding RAM to a comp with still unused space left could speed it up. Was just a coincident to find it out. But it clearly explains what I noticed--especially Firefox (lots of cache files) and the email client (switching folders with many lil files in there) had shown some difference.

Will give the computer store a visit tomorrow..
Cheers
herbs


> Why are you asking about Slackware file caching on a FreeBSD mailing
> list?  :-)
> 
> In any case, what you're probably seeing is the effect of having lots of
> spare RAM to cache files.  In FreeBSD top look at the Cache and Buf
> values up top.  If you're doing a lot of file I/O, this can make a
> noticeable difference, particularly if you're repeatedly reading the
> same files.
> 
> However, as is usually the case, unless you do some benchmarks on *your*
> computer, it's hard to say more than "the first couple GB of RAM you add
> will probably make your workstation run faster."
> 
> --Jon Radel