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Convert Unneeded VRAM Into A Storage Device

Posted by timothy on from the welcome-to-the-bizarroworld dept.

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."

3 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. What the hell can I do with that? by flonker · · Score: 1, Redundant

    From the article, (slightly modified). My karma is capped anyway, so...

    What the hell can I do with that?

    Well, many things. When I was thinking about it, I have found two ways to use it. One of them is making any filesystem on that and mounting it somewhere, the other is more sophisticated:
    meehow:~# mkswap /dev/mtdblock0
    meehow:~# swapon /dev/mtdblock0

    Later on, more possibilities occur. You can use this methon in X11 terminals, to limit network bandwitch for example. During bootup such terminal would load kernel and compressed filesystem. The FS may be placed then on such mtdblock device and kernel may boot from it. Using console-only server with some kind of modern 32MB gfx card may use the vram as huge swap (which is way faster than swap on disk). New ideas are welcome :)

  2. need a few extra bytes - use your CMOS RAM by Dolphinzilla · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I don't know why I am so cynical tonight, but give me a break - yes its cute and clever to use your video ram for something other than video but if you have a video card with a lot of ram you probably also put a reasonable amount in your computer in the first place - nice stunt, but not very useful IMHO.

  3. great!!! by ronaldcromwell · · Score: 0, Redundant

    now i can use the 2megs that X _DIDN'T_ gobble up!