about video memory detection in wine

[Roderick Colenbrander]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Stephen Eilert<spedrosa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 4:23 PM, King InuYasha <ngompa13 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> This seems like the wrong way to go. I'm wondering if there is another way
>> to detect VRAM? There should be a way to determine VRAM from Xorg? Why
>> should OpenGL or DirectDraw be the method that Wine uses to determine video
>> RAM? Why should Wine have a fixed value based on a list? Maybe I'm being
>> stupid, but I think it would make sense for the display server (xorg) to
>> know how much VRAM a graphics card has...
>
> Just a nitpick: Wine does not *use* DirectDraw, it *implements* DirectDraw,
> as there's no DirectDraw anywhere other than win32.
>
> I see no problem querying OpenGL, if the extensions can be trusted to
> provide useful values - even if they are undocumented or not always
> available. The problem with the approach so far seems to be that this
> extension is ATI-specific. Then again, the current fallback can be left in
> place if Wine does not find a way to properly detect the VRAM amount.
>
> As for asking Xorg, I do not have the knowledge to say if it is feasible -
> but one would think that would've been tried long ago if it were
> straightforward.
>
>
> --Stephen
>
> programmer, n:
>        A red eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with inanimate
> monsters.
>

Xorg explicitly doesn't tell programs how much memory they have as it
can lead to bad designs and these days cards have a sufficient amount
of memory for 2D. In case of 3D programs the amount of memory is more
important to have. OpenGL itself (except using the ATI extension) does
not provide a way to query the amount of video memory or the exact
videocard (yes it exports the renderer string but d3d exports the pci
id as well. Like X, OpenGL wants to hide this information from the
designer. Though these days this information is becoming more and more
important for designers as they can decide to e.g. use a different
code path. Native Linux games like Quake Wars for this reason use
vendor specific extensions like NV-CONTROL to obtain some info. It
might make sense to have a cleaned up version of the ATI memory
extension as real ARB extension. For modern games it is crucial.
Hopefully AMD can clean it up. When I last checked this extension
months ago the total amount of memory wasn't in the spec, it might
make sense to update the spec.

Regards,
Roderick Colenbrander