On Sun, October 5, 2014 3:02 am, John R Pierce wrote: > On 10/5/2014 12:48 AM, ken wrote: >> >> I sincerely *hope* that it isn't some kind of trend that video cards >> are using shared memory instead of dedicated memory on the card >> itself. All machines I've bought or built since the late '90s have >> had video cards with a .5G of dedicated memory. This is mostly >> because video memory is physically different, using static RAM rather >> than dynamic RAM. The former is something like ten times faster than >> the latter. > > NO video card uses static ram, at least not since the early 1980s. > > the modern CPUs with integrated graphcis controllers such as the Intel > HD4500 stuff is excellent, John, I would respectfully disagree. The bad thing about "shared" memory video cards is fundamental in the architecture. They use as video RAM a portion of main RAM, that means they place the video traffic (30, or 60, 50 25 frames per second multiplied by number of pixels worth) onto memory bus. This traffic has nothing to do with anything but the screen and just doesn't belong there. It is logically independent on anything and should be kept separate from memory bus - physically. I mentioned single board computer I soldered for my kid back then based on Z80 processor as an example of how rudimentary is to mix video traffic into memory bus. It was OK to do that on trivial amateurish single board computer. It is awful to step that low from architecturally good dedicated video ram away on modern sophisticated computer. My computer science degree rejects that and asks to take from "inventors" of that away their computer science degrees. Sorry about harsh attitude. Crap deserves crap. Valeri > at least on MS Windows systems. the main > memory controller on these CPUs has HUGE bandwidth, the video display > overhead is lost in the noise unless maybe you're running dual huge > screens. a dedicated controller might be 2-3X faster or more at 3D > gaming graphics, but its not usefully faster at normal desktop > graphics. dedicated controllers use significantly more battery power > than integrated ones, a consideration on a portable laptop. > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos