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Date:      Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:54:23 -0500
From:      "Kevin - Your.Org" <kevin@your.org>
To:        Stefan Esser <se@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Vladimir Terziev <vlady@gbservices.biz>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: Video memory as swap under FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <2C263E0F-1231-4F73-A820-1A3265B72078@your.org>
In-Reply-To: <470F9BA9.5080606@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <20071012170341.72b8b888.vlady@gbservices.biz>	<470F9175.3020002@FreeBSD.org> <20071012183534.bacd989b.vlady@gbservices.biz> <470F9BA9.5080606@FreeBSD.org>

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On Oct 12, 2007, at 11:07 AM, Stefan Esser wrote:

> Vladimir Terziev schrieb:
>> 	You're right,
>>
>> 	the swap, typically configured, is much more than the amount of  
>> the video memory, but in fact the swap is just a reserv, which  
>> ensures continuation of the normal operations on the machine, at  
>> times of peak loads.
>> 	In our days the amount of RAM placed in the servers is so much,  
>> that the swap, in fact, is rarely used at all and a very small  
>> amount of it (several MB) is used. In that cases having a very  
>> fast swap space in the Video RAM, in addition to the disk swap,  
>> would be a good solution.
>
> If you have a video card with so much excess memory, that you can  
> use it
> for swap, then I wonder whether the video card has not been much too
> expensive ;-)
>
> How about spending $25 for another Gigabyte of RAM (real RAM, not  
> SWAP)
> instead?
>

I'm not commenting on if this is a good idea or not either way, but  
at least one vendor of servers that we've been buying from is now  
including 128 or 256MB of video ram(not UMA, real video ram) embedded  
on the motherboard now.

I thought it was odd too, until I asked our sales rep. The 8MB ATI  
chipset they used to use would have disqualified them from being  
"Vista Capable".

So, whether we want it or not, we're getting at least 128MB of video  
memory on our servers now. I'd thought about trying to use it for  
something, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. :)

-- Kevin




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