Hi,
Will increasing memory cache improve performance?
Thanks,
John

RAM cache increases browsing performance, but overdo it to the point it will make your OS slow.

My HDD cache is 50MB. Seems to work for me.

Don't overdo your RAM cache to the point it will make your OS slow I meant.

Hi Samuel,
I was really wondering about the "memory cache".
.... John



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2007 04:34PM by shakushinnen.

Yes, and he replied to you.

Memory cache is related to RAM. And RAM is related to speed/performance.

But the main reason to use a higher value here is if you visit sites with a lot of information and don't like lags switching from one page/window to another page/window (or tabs).

With 32MB is more than you never need.

Hi John,
Thanks for the help. I reiterated 'memory cache', because K-meleon specifies both memory and disk. I was also a little surprised that the default memory was set to 4mbs. Usually K-meleon default settings are the best for most users. So you're recommending that I set 'memory cache' at 32?
John

When you go to Edit > Preferences and select Cache, you'll find two settings:
Memory Cache specifies the amount of cache memory (in kBytes) that km is using in your Random Access Memory (RAM).
Disk Cache specifies the amount of cache memory (in kBytes) that km is using on your hard disk drive.

The default sizes are 4 MByte (1 MByte = 1024 kBytes) for the Memory Cache and 32 MByte (if I remember right) for the Disk Cache. These settings will work on any computer that meets the minimal system requirements.

However, depending on your system specs (how many RAM and disk space your computer provides) and your way of browsing (what kind of websites you visit - with many or few images, how many web pages you use to open at the same time, how frequently you revisit the same websites) it is appropriate to increase the size of these caches to speed up browsing.

More cache helps more.
- Files that are already in your Disk Cache don't need to be loaded via the network (again). Your hard drive is typically several dozend times faster then your internet connection.
- Files that are already in your Memory Cache don't need to be loaded from your disk. RAM is typically a thousand times faster then any hard disk drive.

More cache helps more, but only to a certain degree.
- The size of the Disk Cache is totally unproblematic. When its size is too big, it simply won't reach its maximum size.
- The size of the Memory Cache is problematic when it's too big. Logically, km cannot use more RAM than your system provides. The RAM that is occupied by km's Memory Cache isn't available any more for other applications. When your Memory Cache is growing to big, it will horribly slow down multitasking, because your operating system is forced to swap (data has to be moved from your RAM to your hard disk and vice versa).

From my personal experience, I tend to say that setting the Memory Cache to more then 16 MB and the Disk Cache to more then 64 MB may not result in any noticeable benefit. For quite some time (since km 0.9) I had set my Memory Cache to 12 MB. I recently encreased it to 16 MB, but didn't notice any benefit so far. Since ever, I've set my Disk Cache to 128 MB, though the actual size hardly reaches more then 50 MB (since files are removed when they reach their date of expiration).

Try it yourself. You can change the cache sizes at any time. When you've enough disk space, set the size of the Disk Cache to 64 MB. When you don't need to care about disk space, set it to 128 MB (it may take you weeks until the Disk Cache actually reaches this size). For the Memory Cache, I'd recommend to increase its size in steps of 4 MB. When you've 256 MB of RAM or more, start with 12 MB. Test a new Memory Cache size for some days and then increase it by 4 MB. When you don't notice any difference, simply restore the previous size and keep that.

Thanks for the primer KKO. I have lots of RAM, so I think I'll just set the memory to 16mb and be done with it.
Thanks again,
John

Hi,

How do I increased the Cache memory for the Disk and memory chache.??

thanks

Edit > Preference > Cache

A+

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Ubuntu 12.04 - Gramps 3.4.9 - Harbour 3.2.0 - Hwgui 2.20-3 - K-Meleon 76.0 rc

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