The texture cache is not the disk cache, that's under the "Network" tab, not the video hardware settings. The setting I'm referring to definitely works the way I suggest it does: Just watch your memory usage as you change it.
You will not see any difference between my suggestion upthread and using RAMDISK in terms of speed. If you have to set your texture cache size (the same memory setting you're referring to above) that low, you just don't have enough RAM and using a RAMDISK will only serve to make SL (and anything else in userspace memory) less stable and more prone to swapping heavily.
You will not see any difference between my suggestion upthread and using RAMDISK in terms of speed. If you have to set your texture cache size (the same memory setting you're referring to above) that low, you just don't have enough RAM and using a RAMDISK will only serve to make SL (and anything else in userspace memory) less stable and more prone to swapping heavily.
The vast majority of users have around 2gb ram or less... doesnt matter how many ways you cut it, rob from the OS and the SL client and give it to the texture cache using the texture memory, will possibly result ibn bottle knecks elsewhere. Given the historic performance of the Clients memory leaks, I would not rely on sharing system ram with Graphic Card memory, even for short term storage. My own GC's (a pair of 8800GT's in a SLi config, each with 1gb DDR III ram), means even setting the texture ram to full, I hardly use all the available ram.
To make high quality machinima in SL, requires a fine balance of memory allocation with HD cache. With the memory leaks jumping between system memory and now creeping into GC memory, it always going to be moving goalposts. Using fast and ample GC and system memory, along with fast HD systems, is perhaps belt and braces for the average user, but not for me.