framebuffer size

[stygian]

I'm on an emachines w3107 (onboard geforce 6100) and there is a BIOS option that lets me select 16-32-64-128mb framebuffer size. regardless of what setting I use, NVidia X server settings reports either 256mb (when i select 128) or 128mb (anything other setting). Is this accurate? Can it be configured to not steal my system RAM? When I set the framebuffer BIOS setting to 'disabled' the machine will not boot. What is the full story behind this?

[fhj52]

I'm on an emachines w3107 (onboard geforce 6100) and there is a BIOS option that lets me select 16-32-64-128mb framebuffer size. regardless of what setting I use, NVidia X server settings reports either 256mb (when i select 128) or 128mb (anything other setting). Is this accurate? Can it be configured to not steal my system RAM? When I set the framebuffer BIOS setting to 'disabled' the machine will not boot. What is the full story behind this?...might have better luck in the " NVIDIA Linux " (graphics) thread since question is all about nVidia graphics, even though it is embedded.

Generally speaking it does not "steal" system RAM. It is "allowed" to use it since without it the embedded chip does not have enough horsepower to run many(most?) applications. Because of the latter, most often the default is to use at least 128 MegaBytes. That is just the state of graphics software these days(most being RAM hungry). The system will do better using 256MB or more. The framebuffer is not a lot different in that respect but, IMO, 32 or 64MB will generally suffice.
Other than that ...emachines are weird about some things they do. If emachines mandates 128, not much can be done. You might want to ask them about it.

[Dizzle7677]

In my system a 64 meg framebuffer = 256 ram and goes up incrementally from there ... 128 fb = 512 ram,etc