How does FancyCache compare to windows write caching?

[esepc40991]

Well, first of all, I know the obvious: Write Caching doesn't cache READS.



How does Fancy Cache compare to, say, Write-Caching and Superfetch? Do they interfere? Should I disable one or the other?

[dustyny]

No need to worry, though they are similar concepts (they are all caches) they accomplish different things in different parts of your OS. They all work together no need to worry.

[esepc40991]

Okay.

I just noticed that my "Cached" value in task manager changes from about 3500MB without fancycache to about 300MB WITH fancycache. I wanted to make sure that fancycache wasn't somehow impeding on superfetch's or write cache's performance.

[dustyny]

I see how this confuses a lot of people. Windows memory management is poorly presented in the task manager and it leads to confusion. This Cached value is a bunch of things mashed together and it doesn't really give you any useful insight on what's going on with your system's memory cache. It's more of a quick overview, if I have a machine and the cached value is excessively high or low (though you'll need to know what to expect from a specific app, such as SQL or Exchange) it gives me a quick indication that I need to dig in deeper and see what's going on. We do the same when troubleshooting CPU issues..

If you want to know what is really going on, you'll want to open up performance monitor and add the memory cache counters. This article is a bit old (Win2k) but it still works the same today. I'd warn you that this is really academic, it's not going to do you much good in the end other then education (which in itself is a win).
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 58286.aspx