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From: silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Andy Silverman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Cache & Buffers..how many buffers are required?
Message-ID: <10004@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 17 Apr 89 17:06:19 GMT
References: <2082@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (Andy Silverman)
Organization: University of Pennsylvania
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In article <2082@uwovax.uwo.ca> 16012_3705@uwovax.uwo.ca (Jeff Racine) writes:
>
>	Can anybody offer some insight?  I have been told that if you use a 
>disk caching program then you can reduce the number of buffers specified in
>the `Buffers= ' entry in config.sys.
>	Question:  By how much can you reduce the number?  Is there any way of
>`optimizing' the number of buffers?  Since each buffer takes up 512 bytes of 
>memory, then reducing buffers from 20 to 2 would free up a scarce resource,
>lower memory.

If you have FTP access to Simtel20, there are a few files in the MSDOS.DSKUTL
section, called THRASHER, and a better one called BUFsomething or other, I
think, which play with your autoexec and config files and run a test program,
then they modify the buffers and reboot and it runs again, for a specified
range of buffer sizes.  When it's done the good one prints out a graph
which shows the performance at different buffer sizes.  I used it on my XT
clone, which I had previously set at 30 buffers, and the thing showed me
that the best value was in fact five buffers.  So I switched it and noticed
a substantial performance increase, not to mention saved memory.  So I 
recommend these programs highly.
+----------------+-----------------------------------------+
| Andy Silverman | Internet:   silver@eniac.seas.upenn.edu |
|     "Why?"     | Compu$erve: 72261,531                   |
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