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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."

12 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 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.

    2. 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
  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...

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

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

  5. 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.
  6. 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
  7. 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.

  8. 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.
  9. 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"
  10. 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.