Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 17:17:34 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Rob Vasquez <digital DOT fx AT worldnet DOT att DOT net>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: slow dos, fast win95 linking ?
In-Reply-To: <32CB6464.F10@worldnet.att.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970102171038.18305C-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Thu, 2 Jan 1997, Rob Vasquez wrote:

> I get abou the same results with a 8 
> meg smartdrv cache, but worse results with a 24 meg smartdrv cache. What 
> gives? I have 32 megs of ram and write back caching on both times.

The algorithms of SmartDrv aren't smart enough to make larger caches
better (larger cache means more time to look up sectors cached in it). 
Experience shows that it doesn't pay to define a cache larger than 8MB,
no matter how much free RAM do you have.  Microsoft recommends 4MB as the
maximum size, but I found that 8MB is a bit better on a memory-abundant
system.

AFAIK, the real advantage of the Vcache from Windows 95 is that it adapts
its size dynamically as needed and isn't limited by a single fixed size;
it is also faster because 32-bit protected-mode file system lifts many DOS
limitations which SmartDrv is required to support.