"assumed" graphic card memory

[Jesse Allen]

On 7/14/06, Stefan Dösinger <stefandoesinger at gmx.at> wrote:
> Am Donnerstag 13 Juli 2006 22:07 schrieb Frank Richter:
> > I think the article exaggerates. (a) it refers to one driver which
> > exhibits the problem - Matrox G400 GL, on Win32. Linux drivers may
> > actually all properly support that function. (b) you could use a cap -
> > e.g. never report more than 50% of the total system ram as VRAM. Or use
> > that as a threshold for a heuristic - if more than that amount of
> > textures are reported as "resident", assume the logic is broken.
> I tried the sample program on my Linux box (radeon M9, 64 mb vram) and I don't
> think that it reported correct values. It said 32 mb textures, not all
> resident. While I have a 1400x1050 resolution I don't think it eats 32 mb
> vidmem.
>

Yeah, not at all. Graphics card video ram these days far exceed whats
needed for video modes. Just a quick number crunch shows
1400x1050 at 32bpp only requires approx 5.6MB.  Most of the ram is used
for textures, I believe.

I think the worst case at detecting amount of video ram is stuffing it
with textures and guessing how much went in.