NVIDIA on M2A-VM card.

peeths003 · 10-23-2008, 05:14 AM

Hi , the primary display adapter is already set to PCIEx , so i think i need to check with the UMA Frame Buffer .

I know i am loosing only 6.25 % ( 256 / 4096 * 100 ) from my main memory , but i still remember the time when i bought 64MB RAM for $125

Quakeboy02 · 10-23-2008, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by peeths003

Hi , the primary display adapter is already set to PCIEx , so i think i need to check with the UMA Frame Buffer .

I know i am loosing only 6.25 % ( 256 / 4096 * 100 ) from my main memory , but i still remember the time when i bought 64MB RAM for $125

It's odd, but until last night I just couldn't see what your problem was. But, yesterday I installed a new quad 7050M-M and after the normal birthing aggravations, it says I have only 3 GB rather than 4.

After disabling the shared memory completely it says I have 3.2 now. More than I'll probably ever use at one time, but it is an odd thing.

I remember paying for RAM by the chip. I think they were 4164s or something like that.

Quakeboy02 · 10-23-2008, 05:27 PM

I think I have some more information on this "issue". I just did a quick install of Etch amd64 and /proc/meminfo had over 3.75GB which is what I had expected to see. I wonder if this is a "NUMA" issue in the 32 bit kernel; i.e. it's not there? My guess is that there is a hole in the lower part of the top 1GB of RAM which is created by the UMA shared memory, and the 32 bit kernel can't see around it. I'm downloading Lenny AMD64 now and will give this a try. This may change my whole attitude about 32 bit vs 64 bit.

Or, I could have read meminfo wrong. LOL

jay73 · 10-23-2008, 05:39 PM

Nope, if you want to access all 4GB from a 32 bit OS, you need to install a PAE kernel. Otherwise, you get only about 3GB, the rest being reserved for I/O.

Quakeboy02 · 10-23-2008, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jay73

Nope, if you want to access all 4GB from a 32 bit OS, you need to install a PAE kernel. Otherwise, you get only about 3GB, the rest being reserved for I/O.

Thanks for the input. I'll give that a try.

Quakeboy02 · 10-23-2008, 09:54 PM

Jay, you're right, of course, but this is very strange. PAE is available as option for NOHIGHMEM .configs, and it's forced for HIGHMEM64G .configs, but it's simply not available to HIGHMEM4G configs. I switched from 4G to 64G, recompiled, and the memory shows up properly now.

peeths003 · 10-24-2008, 04:19 AM

I checked with the UMA Frame Buffer , and what i can see is that the UMA Frame Buffer is disabled in BIOA and Current UMA Buffer Memory shows as 0. So there is some other place where the 256 MB of RAM is missing. I am using Fedora 9 64 bit and once OS is loaded it is giving me a RAM of 3.75 .

And as i described before in BIOS the information showing as Installed memory 4096 and Usable memory as 3839 .

So where can the missing 256 be gone ..... ?

I know i wont be using that much of memory when i am using the machine . but still it feels like i have some resource and i wont be able to use them ......

Quakeboy02 · 10-24-2008, 12:25 PM

Quote:

So where can the missing 256 be gone ..... ?

I noticed that the nvidia-settings program grossly overstates the memory usage of my video board. nvidia-settings reports 512MB but lspci -vv reports board use as follows:

Code:

	Region 0: Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
	Region 1: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	Region 3: Memory at fc000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]

So, maybe it's a boundary condition or something like that?

peeths003 · 10-28-2008, 08:27 AM

Hey Quake .. you still missing something .

BIOS the information showing as Installed memory 4096 and Usable memory as 3839 , This is when the OS is not even loaded.

I also have Win XP 64 bit setup it also shows the same and also shows that it is having a dedicated RAM of 512 .