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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."

19 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. I can't help but think.... by Julius+X · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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".

    I'll stick with buying RAM and using my graphics card for what it was designed for. Besides...this only applies to X users anyway.

    --

    -Julius X
    remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
    1. Re:I can't help but think.... by deft · · Score: 3

      i think this technique is for the geel of it, not really for the practicality.

      its one of those mountains geeks climb because its there.

      --

      There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
    2. Re:I can't help but think.... by jareds · · Score: 4, Informative

      Besides...this only applies to X users anyway.

      That's not true. You don't need to use X to do this, you just need a video card. In fact, if you're just using the machine in console mode, you may as well use your video memory for swap or something.

    3. Re:I can't help but think.... by Istealmymusic · · Score: 4, Funny
      Not only in console mode, but I can't help but think of uses in headless boxes i.e. servers. Thanks to this article, I might have just found a use for the 1 AGP and 7 spare PCI slots on my fileserver...now I just need to find 8 128MB video cards, and I'll have a 1GB VRAM! Combined with three 1GB DDR sticks, one can now finally max out the Pentium architecture's limitation of 4GB addressable RAM.

      Next week: Using the new fangled chipped-and-removable 4MB CMOS ICs (as found in Gigabyte's dual BIOS) to trade files with your friends in lieu of floppy diskettes. Nevermind the price tag.

      --
      "The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
    4. Re:I can't help but think.... by friscolr · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.

      --

      -f
      www.blackant.net

  2. Dur... by Loligo · · Score: 5, Insightful


    If you're THAT low on memory, you're not likely to have a 128 meg video card.

    Or a 64 meg card, even.

    -l

  3. Wow! Useful AS! by Kragg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Cool! Finally I have somewhere to store my Quake 3 savegames - on the spare memory of my laptop's 16meg graphics card!

    Or maybe not...

    --
    If you can't see this, click here to enable sigs.
  4. Chances are... by thelinuxking · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  5. Next week on Slashdot... by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...How to use that "cheap" P4 as a, err, inexpensive coffee warmer.

  6. Don't knock it, it's still a cool hack. by Ted_Green · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So what if it's cheaper to buy ram, or that it's not effecient or what not. Half the hacks posted on Slashdot tend to be next to useless anyways.

    It's a cool hack, simple as that.

  7. yah - works well by cullenfluffyjennings · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The AGP interface is much faster than the memory interface on most recent intel based machines. I do computer vision where a bunch of scratch pad memory is required - the memory on the graphics card is fast and can interlace with acces to main memory. Rumour has it many games take advantage of this. In Linux you can do it with X stuff and in Windows you can use DirectX to do it.

  8. speed? by awing0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Cthulhu Saves.
  9. Re:What the hell can I do with that? by Ed+Avis · · Score: 5, Informative

    VRAM can be read and written at the same time - at least on the video card. And it should be possible to use the video hardware to blit around chunks of memory very quickly. I wonder if there are any algorithms (apart from those to manipulate a bitmapped display) which could be specially coded to take advantage of this hardware?

    --
    -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
  10. Re:No by BurntHombre · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "Why does your graphics card have so much..."

    Is probably better.

    The best option, however, would be to not pick on the grammar skills of an English-as-a-second-language writer, unless you care to put your Polish language skills on display for us all.

  11. Temporary use of VRAM by The+Monster · · Score: 3, Informative
    Isn't this a bit wasteful?
    It would be if you bought the card for the express purpose of using the VRAM that way. When I saw this, I had a flashback. When I was using DOS 5/6, with the then-revolutionary ability to remap memory into Upper Memory Blocks between the ROMs and VRAM, I ran into a problem using that memory.

    Most of the drivers and TSRs that I wanted to load in the space originally allocated for monochrome video (a 32K block between B0000 and B7FFF) required more space to load than to run so I came up with the solution of 'borrowing' some VRAM and wrote the Video Hole package to do just that. I used a BIOS call to change the display page from 0 to 6 (for reasons I never quite understood, 7 didn't work on my old Trident 8900) and 'borrowed' 24000 bytes (6 pages of VRAM) from the VRAM to allow a program (say MSCDEX?) to fit in there, then 'recalled' the loan, changing back to page 0. That extra 24K more than took care of the transient portion of a lot of programs that otherwise couldn't use the Video Hole.

    I don't know if anyone else ever used the darned thing (nobody ever sent me the $5 shareware fee for doing so) but it got uploaded to a bunch of BBSes and works in the real mode phase of Win95 and 98 - if you have hardware with real mode drivers that don't know how to load low and relocate the resident portion high, it will do the job fine.

    --

    [100% ISO 646 Compliant]
    SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.

  12. Re:Old School DOS Memory Managers by Safety+Cap · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ~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).
    --
    Yeah, right.
  13. Re:What the hell can I do with that? by not_cub · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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

    --
    q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
  14. Great place to place viral code? by eddy · · Score: 3

    Just kidding. No one would be nasty and put viral code where no scanner has gone before.

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  15. Isn't this what Quartz Extreme is all about? by JohnsonWax · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.