Large memory allocation in OpenGL app on a Quadro fx 3400 PCIe

I'm having a weird problem on the Quadro fx 3400 card. The video card
allocates a lot of main memory. I made a small OpenGL program that
draws one million triangles. On my other card, a 6800 GT, the
application uses about 20MB of memory but on the quadro 300MB.

I have tried many drivers from 71.84 up to 81.84. I tried flashing the
bios to version 5.40.02.41.06.
I tried moving the card to another computer(not dell), but nothing
helps.

I have also experienced the same problem on a dell laptop with a 1400
go card.

Any ideas?

/Fredrik

This could actually be intentional, since the Quadro cards are meant for
DCC, which tends to juggle really large textures well in excess of the
256-512 MB of local video RAM. I wouldn't be surprised if the Forceware
drivers, upon detecting a Quadro card, immediately reserves 300 MB of system
memory for textures.

Go into BIOS. If you see something like AGP aperture, graphics aperture,
graphics window, etc., set it to a small value (~ 64 MB) and see what
happens. Of course, with a Dell BIOS, none of this may be available to
adjust...

How much system RAM do you have? With 2 GB, having 300 MB eaten away
shouldn't be too noticeable.

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."


wrote in message
oups.com...

I'm having a weird problem on the Quadro fx 3400 card. The video card
allocates a lot of main memory. I made a small OpenGL program that
draws one million triangles. On my other card, a 6800 GT, the
application uses about 20MB of memory but on the quadro 300MB.

I have tried many drivers from 71.84 up to 81.84. I tried flashing the
bios to version 5.40.02.41.06.
I tried moving the card to another computer(not dell), but nothing
helps.

I have also experienced the same problem on a dell laptop with a 1400
go card.

Any ideas?

/Fredrik

wrote in message
oups.com...

I'm having a weird problem on the Quadro fx 3400 card. The video card
allocates a lot of main memory. I made a small OpenGL program that
draws one million triangles. On my other card, a 6800 GT, the
application uses about 20MB of memory but on the quadro 300MB.

I have tried many drivers from 71.84 up to 81.84. I tried flashing the
bios to version 5.40.02.41.06.
I tried moving the card to another computer(not dell), but nothing
helps.

I have also experienced the same problem on a dell laptop with a 1400
go card.

Any ideas?

/Fredrik

No AGP Apertures for PCI-E cards!

I've got the same card on a DELL Precision 370 workstation. Theres plenty
of options in the nVIDIA drivers, maybe something in there? We don't really
have much of a problem with memory, related to the card, most of my issues
are often related to a bug in the Parasolid code.
when working with massive models, I often have to use the /3GB switch to get
around Parasolid not finding memory to use.
2GB RAM
4GB pagefile & temp/tmp on a RAID 0 (2x10K rpm SATA) array.

I'd look at your program, nVIDIA driver options and maybe getting more RAM.

Luc,

First of One schrieb:

Go into BIOS. If you see something like AGP aperture, graphics aperture,
graphics window, etc., set it to a small value (~ 64 MB) and see what
happens. Of course, with a Dell BIOS, none of this may be available to
adjust...

His Dell certainly doesn't have a setting for AGP Aperture Size in his
BIOS. No computer with PCIe does have such setting, because AGP Aperture
Size (amount of memory available for texture swapping) is just available
in AGP systems...

BTW: AGP Dells do have this setting in their BIOS

Benjamin

The setting has been known to go under other names like graphics aperture,
graphics window, etc. Since PCIe systems can also swap textures to main
memory, I presume there's a setting to limit how much it can use?

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."

"Benjamin Gawert" wrote in message
...
First of One schrieb:

Go into BIOS. If you see something like AGP aperture, graphics aperture,
graphics window, etc., set it to a small value (~ 64 MB) and see what
happens. Of course, with a Dell BIOS, none of this may be available to
adjust...

His Dell certainly doesn't have a setting for AGP Aperture Size in his
BIOS. No computer with PCIe does have such setting, because AGP Aperture
Size (amount of memory available for texture swapping) is just available
in AGP systems...

BTW: AGP Dells do have this setting in their BIOS

Benjamin

First of One wrote:

The setting has been known to go under other names like graphics aperture,
graphics window, etc.

Right. All that means AGP Aperture...

Since PCIe systems can also swap textures to main
memory,

Right.

I presume there's a setting to limit how much it can use?

Nope. Since it uses a different allocation system there is no user
changeable BIOS setting on PCIe machines...

Benjamin

First of One wrote:
The setting has been known to go under other names like graphics aperture,
graphics window, etc. Since PCIe systems can also swap textures to main
memory, I presume there's a setting to limit how much it can use?

No.. It would not be in the BIOS anyway, if there was such a limit, but
in the card hardware or the video driver, since the video card is
responsible for mapping system memory for video use, not the chipset as
with AGP. I would guess there generally is no limit.

--
Robert Hancock Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/