|
|
These controls set the size of the CD-ROM cache. The CD-ROM cache serves pretty much the same purpose as the Disk Buffer does, which is basically to optimize data transfers from the horribly slow CD-ROM drive by allowing the data to be temporarily stored in memory before being processed.
However, unlike the disk buffer, the CD-ROM cache is a little trickier. Setting it up to it's maximum may not always be the best thing to do. Depending on what type of activity you're using your CD drive for, you may actually benefit from a smaller cache.
CD-ROM drives work differently than hard drives. Hard drives pretty much just spin away, but CD-ROM drives spin at different speeds and after a short while they drop down to sort of an "idle" speed. It all depends on what demands are being placed on the drive by the system. Suppose you're playing a large 50 megabyte multimedia file from a CD-ROM, and you have a 3 megabyte cache set up. Multimedia files like mpeg video process pretty slowly, so the CD-ROM can often fill up the 3 megabyte cache with data faster than the processor needs it. Then since the data is being drawn from memory there's no demand for data being placed on the CD-ROM drive and it might spin down to it's idle speed. Then when the data in the cache is used up and a request is sent to the CD-ROM drive for more, it now has to take time speeding back up. This can often cause the multimedia file to pause or hesitate while waiting for the CD-ROM drive to speed back up, and nobody wants that.
In this scenario having a smaller CD-ROM cache will mean there will be a more constant demand on the CD-ROM drive to provide data, and so it won't get the opportunity to slow down. You would then have a more constant, steady stream from the CD-ROM drive to the processor, and thus avoid irritating pauses in the multimedia.
A good rule of thumb would be that if you use your CD-ROM mostly for multimedia, set a smaller cache size. But if you use it more for file access, then go with a larger size. Start by setting the CD-ROM speed to whatever your drive is rated at, or whichever setting is closest. Then play with the slider to fine-tune the size. But keep in mind that the CD-ROM speed settings aren't carved in stone, and you may find that setting it to a faster or slower setting than your drive rating may give better performance. Like most of the CacheMaster tweaks, it will likely take some experimentation to find just the right setting.