graphics card video memory [solved]

while true · Last edited by while true on Wed Oct 07, 2015 11:48 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hello guys,

So i got myself a better graphics card, SAPPHIRE R5 230 2GB DDR3.
I saw 2GB and i thought that should be video memory,
compared to 256M that I had it is sugnifficien leap.

I changed kernel, reinstalled xord-servet, ati-video-dirver, radeon, reboot and it seems to work.

but:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2015 9:45 pm Post subject:

while true,

You have 2G of Video RAM but it does not work the way you think it does.

The 2G is divided up into pages. Only one page is mapped into the CPU memory space at a time.
Your 2G could be 8 * 256Mb pages. Its not quite that simple either.
This mapping is only used for loading 3D textures into the graphics card. When you are not doing 3D, most of the Video RAM is not used. You may need as much as 64Mb for 2D.

Some further Video RAM may be used for off screen storage of on screen objects, so that they can be copied into the on screen location as required.
Copy operations are much faster than drawing.

The graphics chip gets a series of instructions about what to draw and where to draw it.
Like draw rectangle, fill rectangle. Eventually, something somewhere has to plot every pixel but its not the CPU, unless you use the VGA graphics driver, so the Video RAM does not need to be mapped into the CPU memory space. At least, not much of it.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

while true · Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2015 11:47 pm Post subject:

Hey NeddySeagoon, hello!

aha, so lots of stored stuff, ready for use.

well, so much for my new video card...

NeddySeagoon, thank you again for taking the time and explaining
_________________
Kind regards, Goran Mitic

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