# graphic cards and noob

## while true

Hello Gentoo people, eternal noob here,

So I got gigabyte amd radeon hd 5450 1gb ddr3 graphic card.

lspci says card has only 265mb of ram 

Than I got sapphire amd radeon r5 230 2gb ddr3 card

lspci says card has only 265mb of ram 

So, how can I 'relese' remaining ram?

Is this some kernel thing, or some settings,

OR i do not know my way when it comes to graphics (which is totally true)

Thank you

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## eccerr0r

I looked at my card and see

 *lspci -vvv wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> 
>         Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 12
> ...

 

This is actually the page window and not the full RAM - used for 32-bit address space.  It's accessing your video ram through this window.

You'll need to look at your X video driver output to determine the real RAM quantity:

 *Xorg.0.log wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> 
> [    35.547] (II) fglrx(0): VESA VBE OEM Product: JUNIPER
> ...

 

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## while true

Hey eccerr0r, hello

so I could not find ram in /var/log/Xorg.0.log (greped several keywords, not found):

https://paste.pound-python.org/show/aHfRpzhdphfwt73OPdjU/

I have VirtualBox installed, and there is no option greater than 265mb for virtual machines.

Also, on playonlinux I tried installing skyrim (min 512mb required) but failed with message i have insufficient memory...

I found this, but those are only for couple of gnu distros, could these drivers be of use to me?

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/linux

Thank you

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## eccerr0r

Yeah it looks like it found your memory: 2GB

 *Xorg.0.olog wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> [   227.778] (II) RADEON(0): mem size init: gart size :3fdde000 vram size: s:80000000 visible:7f3a2000
> ```
> ...

 

though it isn't letting you use all of it (about 89% of it).  Might be some housekeeping data it's keeping separate.

I don't know about how passthrough works on VMMs and how it shares memory between processes, so you may have to request this information in a different thread (and mention you're trying in a VMM).

If you want to use the closed source driver from amd, you can emerge ati-drivers - this should set up everything for you though you may still need to download it separately (portage will tell you to do so.)  I'm using the closed source drivers and World of Warcrack seems to work fine on it.  I do not use a VM but hope that wine will be enough of a shield in userspace to not muck more than what it needs to.

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