No, there isn't a way to stop rendering when you hit a certain amount without tweaking the code, but you might want to consider using a computed property to simulate the page size you specified like this:
var ViewModel = function () {
var self = this;
var work = new Array(600);
for (var i = 0; i < work.length; i++) {
work[i] = {
name: i.toString()
};
}
self.startPos = ko.observable(0);
self.pageSize = ko.observable(20);
self.workQueue = new ko.observableArray(work);
self.workQueue.paged = ko.computed(function () {
var start = self.startPos();
var end = self.workQueue().length;
end = Math.min(end, start + self.pageSize());
return self.workQueue().slice(start, end);
});
};
var vm = new ViewModel();
ko.applyBindings(vm);
loop();
function loop() {
if (vm.startPos() + vm.pageSize() < vm.workQueue().length) {
vm.startPos(vm.startPos() + 1);
window.setTimeout(loop, 10);
}
}
It just creates a secondary slice of the original array, which you'd bind to instead of the original.
However, the sorting behavior would be strange if you can only see part of the list?