Hannu Krosing <hannu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > Of course there are more variables than just *_page_cost, so if you nail > down any other one, you may end with less than 1 for both page costs. > I have always used seq_page_cost = 1 in my thinking and adjusted others > relative to it. Right, seq_page_cost = 1 is sort of the traditional reference point, but you don't have to do it that way. The main point here is that for an all-in-RAM database, the standard page access costs are too high relative to the CPU effort costs: regression=# select name, setting from pg_settings where name like '%cost'; name | setting ----------------------+--------- cpu_index_tuple_cost | 0.005 cpu_operator_cost | 0.0025 cpu_tuple_cost | 0.01 random_page_cost | 4 seq_page_cost | 1 (5 rows) To model an all-in-RAM database, you can either dial down both random_page_cost and seq_page_cost to 0.1 or so, or set random_page_cost to 1 and increase all the CPU costs. The former is less effort ;-) It should be noted also that there's not all that much evidence backing up the default values of the cpu_xxx_cost variables. In the past those didn't matter much because I/O costs always swamped CPU costs anyway. But I can foresee us having to twiddle those defaults and maybe refine the CPU cost model more, as all-in-RAM cases get more common. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance