ENABLING OF AUDIT LOGS

I enabled audit logging on our SAP Development using transaction sm19 and noticed that the log files residing on the OS file system: /usr/sap/DEV/DVEBMGS00/log growing rather fast.

This is for Development only, If I enable it on Production the growth would probably be faster.

Aside from the fact that the logs eat up a lot of space, will audit logging result to any performance degradation? Does audit logging create additional dialog processes?

Our present setup is rather standard and we cannot provide additional resources as of now.

My machine has 4096 MB memory and speed of 2 Processor Power PC_Power4 1 GB