Video Memory

[Carl Friis-Hansen]

Lucio M Nicolosi wrote:
>>> No, that can't be right, because if I run the free command, it reports
>>> 384 MB's of total physical RAM available to the system, plus the swap
>>> file. I just think *something* is fooling all of these other programs
>>> into reporting 256 MB's for the video card, and it's really only running
>>> 128 MB's.
>>>
>>> Here's the output of the free command.
>>>
>>> ray at ray-desktop:~$ free -m
>>>             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
>>> Mem:           375        366          9          0          0         51
>>> -/+ buffers/cache:        314         60
>>> Swap:         1023        501        522
>>>
>>>
>> Best Regards and sorry I couldn't help.
>>
>> Lucio
>>
> 
> Back to business,
> 
> Made some tests w/ my board (onboard nvidia)
> 
> Independent of the amount of memory allocated for BIOS frame buffers
> (from 32 to 512) the following is always the same (i.e. not correct)
> 
> lspci -v -s 02:00.0
> 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8200 (rev a2)
> 	Subsystem: nVidia Corporation Device cb84
> 	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 22
> 	Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
> 	Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
> 	Memory at fa000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
> 	I/O ports at dc00 [size=128]
> 	[virtual] Expansion ROM at feae0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
> 	Capabilities: <access denied>
> 	Kernel driver in use: nvidia
> 	Kernel modules: nvidia, nvidiafb
> 
> nvidia-xconfig shows either 256Mb or 512Mb of video memory depending
> on the frame buffer size but only these numbers (i.e. not correct)
> 
> The amount of memory available ( F.I. cat /proc/meminfo) reflects yes
> (by subtraction) the allocated frame buffer. (correct)
> 
> So it seems that it is difficult for linux to directly assess the
> amount of allocated video memory, (try googling it, got some hits but
> didn't take note) and most commands return questionable values.
> 
> L.
> 

Many computers used to have a fixed on-board 64MByte memory. Wouldn't 
this explain your numbers? What does the manual say?
Just a thought.

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       | Carl Friis-Hansen               | Fiskeryd Nybygget |
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