Jon Radel wrote: > herbert langhans wrote: >> Hi Daemons, >> recently I had to add some more RAM on a workstation. Was 512MB before and >> is 2GB now, the reason was to give some graphic apps more space. >> >> But to my surprise the workstation ran faster--but before adding RAM it did >> NOT make use of the swap-partition and after the big RAM chip of course not >> too (checked it with #top). >> >> This was a Slackware installation. Had anyone experienced such effect on BSD >> as well? > > 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.
It has been pointed out that this response by me is incomplete, arguably misleadingly so. See http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-performance/2004-April/000769.html for much more technical detail on what is really happening. --Jon Radel
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