Images in other memory

[Christopher Follett]

Proberly a silly question.

On the MicroA1, your stuck with 32MB (if you want usb).
In 3.9 you had an option to use system (other) mem for images etc etc. This freed up the GFX mem.
Does OS4.1 have something like this?

At the moment, with compositing on, I cant do much as it leaves me with 1MB GFX RAM.

[ChrisH]

I don't think there is any such option.

You can tell Compositing to "Optimise for: Video memory usage", but I assume you already tried that? Another thing to try is to use 16-bit instead of 32-bit screenmodes. On my Sam440 (with 64MB of Video RAM) I found that sufficient, but with only 32MB of Video RAM your only solution may be to turn Compositing off.

BTW, on my Sam440 I actually disabled Compositing on all screens EXCEPT Workbench. This requires jumping through a few hoops AFAIR, but nothing too complex.

[Christopher Follett]

BTW, on my Sam440 I actually disabled Compositing on all screens EXCEPT Workbench. This requires jumping through a few hoops AFAIR, but nothing too complex.

This sounds interesting, can you give more info?

[Slayer]

I never ran compositing on my 667MHz SAM either

If I remember correctly when you installed AOS4.1.1? It gives you the option to have the classic look or the new compositing look

I remember being a little curious at first and went for the compositing enabled option

After some use I decided it wasn't for me at that particular time, I remembered back to the install process and concluded there must be a default compositing off pref file on the CD

Sure enough I found such the file on the CD and copied it over (after a slight name change)

I thought this was an easier more complete deactivation instead of me trying to slide or click toggle boxes in any gui menu, However, I'm sure there is a toggle box and someone knows it and of course if you want a partial setup you'll need to tweak the sliders and buttons etc..

[chris]

However, I'm sure there is a toggle box and someone knows it

There is - there's a checkbox in GUI prefs which says "Use Compositing".

Having played around here, I've found there are significant advantages to having compositing enabled. Dragging windows around is much faster with compositing on. Also, smart refresh windows seem to use less gfx mem when compositing is enabled for the screen they are on. Simple refresh windows behave as if they are smart refresh (the OS redraws damaged areas, not sure if the application still gets the refresh notification though).

I have the transparent window effects switched off because I don't like them, but I would recommend to leave compositing on for all screens.