Video Ram not detected

[jsmith_98]

I have a GE Force MX 440 card with 128 meg of video ram and the nvidia driver reports it as 32 meg (from the Xorg.0.log). Coding VideoRam in the xorg.conf file makes no difference.

I'm running FreeBSD with the latest nvidia driver (there's no FreeBSD forum or I would post to that).

Any suggestions?

[netllama]

jsmith_98,
Please generate and attach a bug report for review.

Thanks,
Lonni

[jsmith_98]

I will attach my dmesg and Xorg.0.log. If you need more, please ask.

You will notice the line

NVIDIA(0): VideoRAM: 32768 kBytes

in the Xorg.0.log.

[netllama]

jsmith_98
Please try adding the following to your xorg.conf:
VideoRam 65536

thanks,
Lonni

[jsmith_98]

Setting VideoRam to 65536 doesn't change anything (a diff of the Xorg log files only has the startup time changed).

The windows driver has no trouble recognizing the 128 meg of video ram.

[jsmith_98]

I ran the Gentoo Live CD and it used the Linux nvidia driver and it appears to have the same problem: it only detects 32 meg of video ram.

[netllama]

jsmith_98,
What kind of motherboard are you using? Can you please generate and attach an nvidia bug report from this system?

Thanks,
Lonni

[jsmith_98]

I'm not sure what you mean. My posting of 8/20 has an attached text file with:

1. The log of Xorg starting up

2. The dmesg from booting my operating system.

The motherboard is an Asrock P4V88.

The relevant line from the dmesg listing is:

nvidia0: <GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X> mem 0xfd000000-0xfdffffff,0xe0000000-0xe7ffffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1

[netllama]

jsmith_98,
In Linux, you can run nvidia-bug-report.sh to generate an nvidia-bug-report.log. Since you stated you were able to reproduce this in Gentoo as well, I'd like to see that bug report, which will help me to reproduce this.

Thanks,
Lonni

[jsmith_98]

Here it is (attached).

I noticed that it had been unable to initialize my agp port...

[jsmith_98]

Sorrt! Here's the correct bug report.

it says the nvidia driver couldn't initialize the agp port...

[netllama]

jsmith_98,
An AGP initialization failure wouldn't or shouldn't reduce the amount of VRAM that is detected, only negatively impact performance. Have you verified that you have the most recent motherboard and videocard BIOS's?

Thanks,
Lonni

[jsmith_98]

How do you update the videocard's BIOS? There's nothing on the nvidia web site about this...

The ASROCK web site has information on updating its BIOS but it's full of blood-curdling warnings about rendering the motherboard unusable.

I think the nvidia agp is not initialized because the Linux agp driver is present.

[netllama]

jsmith_98,
NVIDIA doesn't provide VBIOS updates, as that is the responsibility of the videocard vendors. Not all of them provide updates, however some do.

Updating any BIOS carries some risk, as you are rewriting code on the chip. Some vendor's highlight the risk more than others.

You can use the NvAGP option with a value of 1 to force the nvidia driver's AGP support.

Thanks,
Lonni

[jsmith_98]

The only manufacturer listed on the box the card came in was Nvidia. If Nvidia corporation doesn't make video cards, then the manufacturer is anonymous (?!?) :confused:

[jsmith_98]

This continues a thread started about a year ago.

The nvidia driver only detects 32 meg of ram under FreeBSD or Linux although the Windows driver detects all 128 meg.

Looking at the dmesg line for my graphics card, I get:

nvidia0: <GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X> mem 0xfd000000-0xfdffffff,0xe0000000-0xe7f

showing that the memory is allocated in two noncontiguous blocks. The nvidia driver only seems to detect the first and not the second (where most of the memory lies).

Actual use of the chip (for games, etc.) implies that only 32 meg of video ram are available to applications.

Suggestions that I tried that didn't correct the problem:

1. Upping the memory declaration in the xorg.conf file.

2. Trying to upgrade the BIOS (my graphics card lists no manufacturer anywhere on the box or instruction leaflet --- even the chips themselves only list the name of their respective manufacturers).

[zander]

@jsmith_98: the two memory ranges reported in the `dmesg` output are those reported by the graphics card via the BAR0/BAR1 registers in its PCI configuration space, i.e. BAR0, 16MB @ 0xfd000000 and BAR1, 128MB @ 0xe0000000. Which NVIDIA FreeBSD and Windows graphics driver releases are you using, respectively? Can you run the attached application via the commands below and post the output it generates? Has an earlier NVIDIA FreeBSD graphics driver release reported 128MB?

# unzip /path/to/fbsize.zip
# ./fbsize 0xe0000000 0x8000000

[jsmith_98]

./fbsize 0xe0000000 0x8000000

produces the response

0xe0000000, 33554432 bytes

which looks like 32meg...

I don't know what an earlier graphics driver would have done: I upgraded my graphics card (from one that had 32 meg) at the same time as my graphics driver.

Right now, I'm running

nvidia-driver-1.0.8762

and my uname -a is

FreeBSD jsmith.org 6.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE #0: Thu Jun 15 09:08:42 EDT 2006 jsmith@jsmith.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MYKERNEL i386


No FreeBSD or Linux nvidia driver has reported 128 meg.

Only the Windows XP driver does this...

[jsmith_98]

Here's a screenshot from Windows XP. You can see that the nvidia driver reports 128 meg of video ram. Maybe the other information it reports will help...

The main reason I'm pursuing this (after a year of not doing so) is that I'm thinking up upgrading my graphics card and want to be sure the system will be able to access the new card's memory.

[zander]

Which Windows graphics driver release are you using? Are the 128MB reported in the driver's control panel? The output of the fbsize utility suggests that there really are only 32MB installed on the board, even though it's strapped to report an 128MB BAR1.

[jsmith_98]

That windows screenshot was from the driver's control panel (as far as I understand things). It was the utility that comes with the driver for configuring various display options.

Are you saying that the card is lying about how much memory it has?