[MPlayer-users] why is -nocache default?

[D Richard Felker III]

On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 07:02:27PM +0300, yourself wrote:
> D Richard Felker III wrote:
> >
> >1. -cache will make noninterleaved avi files take 10000% cpu to play.
> >2. -cache in generally makes mplayer slower unless you need it to
> >compensate for broken hardware or slow network.
> >
> 
> You're probably right but in my experience, -cache makes mplayer much 
> smoother in playback. If I use -nocache I can spot random pauses and 
> jumps in the playback, which totally fade away even when using a small 
> cache. I wouldn't think that my hardware is broken, as i've got the 
> files on a new 200gb disk on my mainboard's integrated via controller 
> (which i really would like to believe is not broken :-)) and an athlon 
> xp 2600+ cpu...
> 
> Another thing I noticed is that there is much more IDE activity (led 
> blinks continuously) when using -nocache... I kinda dislike the idead of 
> my disk _continuously_ reading just a little bit...
> 
> It really intrigues me to hear that mplayer is better off without 
> -cache... !!
> 
> Maybe it's something else that's causing those random pauses?

probably wrong hdparm settings. make sure you have sufficient
readahead, dma enabled, unmasking enabled, 32bit mode enabled, etc..

rich