how do I increase video card RAM?
 

I installed slack 10 a couple of weeks ago and at the time I must have indicated that my video card had 16M RAM, but find out now that it actually has 32M. dmesg indicates that my system is seeing 16M:

mga_vid: detected RAMSIZE is 16 MB

How can I change my video card settings? I assume I can do this since it asked for this information at installation.

Go into your "/etc/X11/XF86Config" or "/etc/X11/XF86Config-4" file (first look for the XF86Config-4, if it isn't there then use XF86Config). Now look for the line that says Section "Device", and you should see something like this (here's mine):

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
# Here's an example of a comment (there may be some in yours)
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 4 (generic)"
# VideoRam 131072 (i commented mine out because it isn't needed)
EndSection

Now yours will say different things, and for "VideoRam" it should say 16384 - change this to 32768. If it isn't in there (do a search for videoram in the file just to be sure) then here's what I think:

Are you 100% sure that you have a 32MB video card? The thing I showed you above (and any configuration during setup) isn't needed at all - in fact, I haven't gotten a prompt for that during setup since the days of Redhat 6.5, about 4 years ago. It's just not needed anymore since all video cards nowadays can be autoprobed. I really am not sure that you have a 32MB card, it would pick it up automatically during setup if you did.

Some less common cards or older ones require you to still specify it. Its not dependant on the x version but whether your card supports the ability to be 'autoprobed'.

Yea I know, but I assumed that autoprobe would work, since every computer with an 8MB or larger video card has worked for me (im using MB as an example for how new it is, like I dont mean because it has 8MB or more it will work, I mean if it was made during or after the "8MB-era" then it has worked for me, if that makes any sense :D). So I'm almost 100% sure a 32MB card would work, by the time 32MB card came out, most of the little companies in video card making (well, for consumer-level use anyway) were out of the game.

I think I may have wasted your time. I vaguely recall now that after considering putting in a value for the videoRAM and changing it later that I booted into Suse and got the value from there, so the 16M should be correct. I did check the videoRAM section of my xorg.conf file and it was commented out also, so I suppose my system did get the 16M directly from the card at startup. I am curious why the description of my card online has twice the RAM advertised than I actually have when the card number and name are the same.

Ahh cool, i guess you just exposed me for the youngn' I am :)

Hah, just my experience, ive been messing with linux on and off since 99, but finally recently just switched over, so I've picked up a few things along the way. Anyway, I don't know why your video card is detected wrong, are you sure that yours isn't an older revision or something? Good luck though!