Convert Unneeded VRAM Into A Storage Device

Pawel Kot writes "Have you ever thought why does your graphics card has so much memory? Do You think you have not enough RAM or awfully slow swap file? Do you need fast ram-disk or diskless machine? Go for it! Take one of these cheap 128MB graphics cards and enjoy the speed. Michal Schulz wrote a good description on how to take the advantage of not used video card memory."

Comments

Chances are...

[thelinuxking]

If you HAVE a new 128 mb video card (which isn't that cheap!), you probably also have a fast processor and motherboard, and lots of memory anyway.

I strongly doubt you would buy a fast processor with an agp motherboard (needed for the card), and desperately needed memory so badly, that you take from the 128 mb video card.

speed?

[awing0]

Would the speed of the VRAM be affected by the AGP read back bandwidth issue? I'm looking for the story that was posted on slashdot a while back, but the search function is less than adequate.

On another note, this would be usefull for older machines that only have SIMMS and use EDO/FP RAM which is a lot more expensive than todays SD/DDR RAM. But, alas, those old machine don't have AGP ports. So, really, I don't see the point to this.

Re:Old School DOS Memory Managers

[Safety Cap]

~create a handful more conventional memory beyond the 640k~

During one QA session with QEMM 6.x, we managed to create something in the neighborhood of 900k (!) conventional memory. If memory serves, the trick was to stealth the roms out with QEMM, copy command.com onto Kernl386.exe and fire up Win 3.1 (if any of you punks who didn't live on the top floor of 150 Pico remember different, please chip in).

Re:What the hell can I do with that?

[not_cub]

Yes there are. I attempted to write a program to find the weak Schur numbers using this (I needed to bitshift bit arrays larger than 32-bits a lot, and I figured a way that a video card could do this well, especially on this problem). The real problem with this approach was the bandwidth back to the processor mentioned in a slashdot article not so long ago. Most consumer video cards just aren't designed to send data back to the processor fast.

not_cub

Re:I can't help but think....

[friscolr]

Isn't this a bit wasteful? I mean you can buy 128mb of memory for a LOT cheaper than one of those "ultra cheap 128mb graphics cards".

sometimes we get servers thrown in our laps that already have gfx cards which aren't needed. my last Sun came with 128mb video card plus an onboard 64mb card. i don't use either one since i use serial console on the thing.

I'm working on cd's that will install themselves into memory filesystems. Problem is, to get a decent set of apps i need a lot of memory. Using vram would be very nice, maybe not for a machine that i would spec out since i'd buy it with enough RAM, but what about borrowing/hijacking machines? Imagine using this cd to go to library, boot computer from cd, cd ejects (so there's no trace of you since upon reboot, mem is wiped), you walk on. what you left behind: a machine running gnutella and using memory file systems to store files on. getting more space from the vram would be essential.

Isn't this what Quartz Extreme is all about?

[JohnsonWax]

Basically Apple is finding a use for all of that VRAM while users are futzing around not playing 3D games. Granted, it's finding interesting ways to accelerate 2D video and using the AGP to pull from main RAM as well, but it's in the same sprit as stuffing random data in there.

Rather than buy an extra card for this purpose, the question to ask is how much of that 128MB am I using day-to-day. If the answer is *none* (as Apple determined) then this is a good thing.