Baslinux mailing list

["David Moberg" <davidjmoberg AT lycos.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
 
> > Perhaps at 2MB the motherboard can use some other memory source, but
> We are talking of video RAM here - do you mean that the chip might
> come with its own 2MB of video RAM, but if you ask for 4M then it 
> no longer uses that RAM but shares the motherboard's main RAM 
> (DIMMs)?

Yes. Some clever/ugly (depending on your viewpoint) hack to free up the
2MB of main RAM.

> > at 4MB it's too slow and has to switch to RAM? Maybe something else is
> > enabled at 2MB which affects Linux's memory detection? I have no solid
> > answer. The motherboard may not actually allocate 4MB if it's enabled,
> > but 2MB may need to be allocated for a basic console.
> 
> I don't know what you mean about slow.

I mean that it's very slow to switch between the 2MB of memory and main
memory. It's much quicker if everything is in main (extended) memory.

> I have discovered that the 
> more memory you put into a video card, the slower it tests out.  
> The memory is for increasing resolution and color depth.

Of course, with 3D the extra memory for textures makes things much
quicker (you no longer have to swap them out to main memory),
offsetting the speed penalty which comes from having to address more
RAM.

> Okay.  James had a similar problem which is how I fixed it.
> I did search on the gpf: 0000 and lots of people get that for 
> various reasons to do with modules/drivers.

No one else had this problem with the hardware (some Compaq PC I believe
you said) in question? Or did James also have issues with VRAM allocation?

David
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