Max cache size changed?

Am I just imagining that the maximum cache size was increased but is now back to 1 gig max like it used to be?

You're not seeing things. As I understand it, they discovered that larger caches negatively impacted texture resolution, so they canned that idea for the time being.

Kam

No, you're not imagining it.

They say performance is lower with a larger cache.

Maybe on the Linden LAN where they've got 100 megabyte pipes to the grid, but out here I'd happily put up with slightly lower FPS to get my textures loaded quickly.

The whole reason I am intrested in the "first look" viewer is to cache large amounts of textures.

For some reason my 3G cable modem can only download at 150Kb/s at times from LL.
It works fine at other sites. I also have to limit it to about 400Kb/s to reduce packet loss.

Worse yet this latest version seems to be stuck at 200Mb and it clears the regular client's cache too.

Edit: It seems to have reverted to the default directory. I set it back, but I still can't get it to grow larger than 200MB

Edit again: One problem I was having was due to not having "-settings settings_firstlook.xml" in my shortcut.

I thought textures ignored the cache size and had an unlimited size? The fixed-size cache should now only be for primitives and other things. Or has this changed too?

For those of us who basically LIVE on 3 islands, having a large cache was great! Cache the entire set of sims and there was never a rezzing issue. Now, we're back to watching the dragging load time again. *sigh*

I filled my bigger 10gb cache really quickly and never noticed any side-effects. Sure it might slow down, but the only time that matters is if the load times should somehow become so large that downloading it again is quicker.
So 0.2 seconds might be 'slow' from a local file-loading point of view, but it's still faster than the 20 seconds downloading from the simulator.

I suspect Linden Labs is seeing better performance from a smaller cache because they're on the same LAN as the asset servers.

Well in that case one of the premium perks should be the ability to jack-in directly at one of their data-centres, with free air-travel from the UK

Having the cache set to ten gigs seemed fine to me. I sure would like to have the option.

I can't see why those who want it should be denied the ability just because some don't want it or don't find it works for them. Limiting our abilty to set the cache size to our preference seems senseless to me. I can't see why it should be limited to only ten gigs. If it's slowing us down, that is our problem, not linden labs, so far as I can see.

I'm not sure how the texture versus non-texture cache system is being done.

on some machines (i saw this my self) having a cache over 500megs in firstlook would cause random shuttering or stuttering of the client, while the machine searched for the cached sources, since cacheing is written on a hard disk, its very random on where it places the data. which means fast caching time, but odd effects when retreiving the information. it was pretty bad on mylaptop for a while, and no the harddisk wasnt anywhere near full.

That's why you put the cache on a separate physical drive, and (on Windows, which as far as I know is the only place where this matters ) keep it defragmented.