Hyperion Entertainment Message Boards

@trevor

Do you get all 256mb of gfx ram?

ddni wrote:@trevor

Do you get all 256mb of gfx ram?

To be honest, I've never bothered checking!

Trevor

Update

Workbench and Ranger reports all 256MB avaiable.

Trevor

trevordick wrote:Update

Workbench and Ranger reports all 256MB avaiable.

Trevor

Nice to know that all 256mb of VRAM is available. I think I will buy one of those Radeon 9250 256mb VRAM video cards to install in my X1000 (after also getting a PCI-e to PCI adapter to move my Ethernet card and make space for the 2nd video card in the vacated PCI slot), so I can play all the 3D games that all the SAM440 & SAM460 owners, plus all the G4 AmigaOne owners are able to play. Being able to have two monitors with different screens being displayed at the same time is also a nice advantage of adding the 2nd video card.

I was thinking of looking for a faster Radeon 9000 Pro video card, but I don't think they are available with 256mb of VRAM in PCI form factor, or if they are, they are probably much harder to find, would most likely be used instead of new, and would probably be much more expensive for very little difference in performance on any of the games I am likely to play on it in my X1000.

trevordick wrote:Update

Workbench and Ranger reports all 256MB avaiable.

Trevor

This will depend on which chip is on your Radeon Card. There are a number of different ones, most split 256Mb into 2 128Mb regions, these cards will only show 128Mb with P96. The same is true of Radeon HD cards which only have a 256Mb region therefore show only 256Mb ram with Picasso, even for cards with 1Gb or more...

There are a tiny number of cards which have a chip with only one memory region of 256Mb on, Trevor has one of these and therefore can use all 256Mb of his VRAM. You will not be able to tell which a card is until you plug it into your X1000, so be warned!

Regards
Darren

daz wrote:

trevordick wrote:Update

Workbench and Ranger reports all 256MB avaiable.

Trevor

This will depend on which chip is on your Radeon Card. There are a number of different ones, most split 256Mb into 2 128Mb regions, these cards will only show 128Mb with P96. The same is true of Radeon HD cards which only have a 256Mb region therefore show only 256Mb ram with Picasso, even for cards with 1Gb or more...

There are a tiny number of cards which have a chip with only one memory region of 256Mb on, Trevor has one of these and therefore can use all 256Mb of his VRAM. You will not be able to tell which a card is until you plug it into your X1000, so be warned!

Regards
Darren

Yes, I have read about this happening. It is too bad you can't tell before purchasing and plugging in the card if it will show all 256mb, or only 128mb. I don't want to purchase a dozen video cards searching for one that shows all 256mb of VRAM and reselling the rest at a partial loss of their purchase price, or getting stuck with several cards I have trouble selling, since they are not that popular anymore.

Come to think of it, my Radeon HD 4650 video card in my X1000 now only shows 256mb of VRAM I think, and it is a 1gb VRAM card, IIRC.

Just to mention that it really should NOT matter if Picasso96 "only" sees 256MB out of 1GB (or even 128MB out of 256MB). Yes, it would be nice, but are you really going to have more than 256MB (or even 128MB) worth of screens & windows? That would be quite hard to achieve...

... and I gather that 3D will still be able to use ALL of the RAM (i.e. 1GB on a 1GB card, or 256MB on a 256MB card) regardless of how it is organised. The only limitation is with Picasso96's 2D stuff.

BTW, a 1600 x 1200 x 32-bit screen takes 7.3MB of RAM. So you would need 18 screens-worth of 2D stuff to exceed 128MB video ram! Without Compositing enabled that means you would need 18 such screens. WITH Compositing each window needs it's own video memory, so 1 screen with 17 full-screen windows would be the equivalent of 18 screens.