How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

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deepakdeshp
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How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

Post by deepakdeshp »

Hello,
I am running 64 bit Cinnamon 18.3 version . I have 8gb memory.
But I see that only 6.9 gb is used ,

I would like to know where else is the remaining memory being used.
Is the main memory being stolen and being used by the graphics? If yes, how to see it?

Code: Select all

uma@mint-18-uma ~ $ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           6914        2713        3226          52         974        3852
Swap:          5103           5        5098
I have 256MB graphic memory as shown below.

I used this to find about my graphics memory
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-fin ... -card-ram/

Code: Select all

lspci -vs 00:01.0
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] (rev 45) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 35
	Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [[b]size=256M[/b]]
	Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=8M]
	I/O ports at 5000 [size=256]
	Memory at f0e00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
	Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: radeon
	Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu
Thanks all in anticipation.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Mint 21.1 Cinnamon 64 bit with AMD A6 / 8GB
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Steensen
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Re: How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

Post by Steensen »

Your own read out states 3226MB as being free, 52MB "shared" as in used by GPU.
OS: Linux Mint 21.1-64-bit Cinamon/win 10 dual boot
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deepakdeshp
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Re: How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

Post by deepakdeshp »

Steensen wrote: Sun Jun 10, 2018 12:01 pm Your own read out states 3226MB as being free, 52MB "shared" as in used by GPU.
Arithmetic does not match.
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roblm
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Re: How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

Post by roblm »

The total memory shown by the free -m command will not include memory reserved by the kernel and other hardware devices. The video card can reserve some for it’s display buffers. However, your reserved amount seems excessive.

Here is the output of free -m on two of my PCs that also have 8 GB memory, with only Firefox running. The first one has Integrated AMD Radeon graphics. The second has a video card with 2 GB memory:

Code: Select all

free -m
              	total        used        free      shared  	buff/cache   available
Mem:            7917         737        6227          81         952        6807
Swap:             0           0           0

Code: Select all

free -m
              	total        used        free      shared    buff/cache   available
Mem:            7988         761        6571          61         655        6887
Swap:             0           0           0

Does the output of free -m show significantly more total memory after a restart, with no programs running?
deepakdeshp
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Re: How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

Post by deepakdeshp »

roblm wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 9:34 am The total memory shown by the free -m command will not include memory reserved by the kernel and other hardware devices. The video card can reserve some for it’s display buffers. However, your reserved amount seems excessive.

Here is the output of free -m on two of my PCs that also have 8 GB memory, with only Firefox running. The first one has Integrated AMD Radeon graphics. The second has a video card with 2 GB memory:

Code: Select all

free -m
              	total        used        free      shared  	buff/cache   available
Mem:            7917         737        6227          81         952        6807
Swap:             0           0           0

Code: Select all

free -m
              	total        used        free      shared    buff/cache   available
Mem:            7988         761        6571          61         655        6887
Swap:             0           0           0

Does the output of free -m show significantly more total memory after a restart, with no programs running?
Free -m still shows 6914m as total memory for a fresh system boot. The remaining memory must be used for graphics.

Code: Select all

free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           6914        1264        4628          38        1021        5331
Swap:          5103           0        5103
I do not know how to display the graphics memory or a way to claim back the graphics memory being taken from the main memory.
Can somebody help please?
If I have helped you solve a problem, please add [SOLVED] to your first post title, it helps other users looking for help.
Regards,
Deepak

Mint 21.1 Cinnamon 64 bit with AMD A6 / 8GB
Mint 21.1 Cinnamon AMD Ryzen3500U/8gb
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roblm
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Re: How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

Post by roblm »

A BIOS update is mentioned often as a possible solution.

This article appears to have some info that may help, if you can figure out how the author got his results from converting the data from the dmesg | grep BIOS output, which I assume is in hexadecimal format:
https://www.jungo.com/st/document/tech- ... ows-linux/

Here is a Hex to Decimal converter:
https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/num ... cimal.html

So if I convert the two hexadecimal numbers in this line:

Code: Select all

[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000007dce0000 (usable)
I get: 1048576 - 2110652416

So how does the author get 1.95GB memory range from that info. Let’s assume those numbers refer to bytes. Then subtracting the smaller one from the larger one would give 2.1 GB. It would be more helpful if you could find a similar article that explained things in more detail.

Doing a Google search using words like these can bring up many articles:

How to find out what hardware is reserving memory in linux.
How to get rid of hardware reserved memory in Linux.

Here is one of the topics in the Mint forums:
viewtopic.php?t=201942
deepakdeshp
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Re: How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

Post by deepakdeshp »

roblm wrote: Wed Jun 13, 2018 8:03 pm A BIOS update is mentioned often as a possible solution.

This article appears to have some info that may help, if you can figure out how the author got his results from converting the data from the dmesg | grep BIOS output, which I assume is in hexadecimal format:
https://www.jungo.com/st/document/tech- ... ows-linux/

Here is a Hex to Decimal converter:
https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/num ... cimal.html

So if I convert the two hexadecimal numbers in this line:

Code: Select all

[ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000007dce0000 (usable)
I get: 1048576 - 2110652416

So how does the author get 1.95GB memory range from that info. Let’s assume those numbers refer to bytes. Then subtracting the smaller one from the larger one would give 2.1 GB. It would be more helpful if you could find a similar article that explained things in more detail.

Doing a Google search using words like these can bring up many articles:

How to find out what hardware is reserving memory in linux.
How to get rid of hardware reserved memory in Linux.

Here is one of the topics in the Mint forums:
viewtopic.php?t=201942
Thank you. I am looking at a method that helps find the graphics memory being used ,the main memory being used by the graphics and to find out why free command shows only 6.9 GB while I have 8 GB memory.
I have also updated BIOS.
If I have helped you solve a problem, please add [SOLVED] to your first post title, it helps other users looking for help.
Regards,
Deepak

Mint 21.1 Cinnamon 64 bit with AMD A6 / 8GB
Mint 21.1 Cinnamon AMD Ryzen3500U/8gb
phd21
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Re: How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

Post by phd21 »

HI deepakdeshp

Linux: Find Out Video Card Memory RAM Size Using Command Line Utility - nixCraft
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-fin ... -card-ram/


How to Get Graphics Card Information On Linux
https://www.maketecheasier.com/graphics ... ion-linux/

...
Phd21: Mint 20 Cinnamon & xKDE (Mint Xfce + Kubuntu KDE) & KDE Neon 64-bit (new based on Ubuntu 20.04) Awesome OS's, Dell Inspiron I5 7000 (7573) 2 in 1 touch screen, Dell OptiPlex 780 Core2Duo E8400 3GHz,4gb Ram, Intel 4 Graphics.
deepakdeshp
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Re: How much memory does the graphics adapter have ?

Post by deepakdeshp »

phd21 wrote: Fri Jun 22, 2018 12:14 pm HI deepakdeshp

Linux: Find Out Video Card Memory RAM Size Using Command Line Utility - nixCraft
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-fin ... -card-ram/


How to Get Graphics Card Information On Linux
https://www.maketecheasier.com/graphics ... ion-linux/

...

Code: Select all

lspci |grep -i device|grep VGA
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] (rev 45)
uma@mint-18-uma ~/Desktop $ lspci -v -s 00:01.0
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] (rev 45) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 35
	Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=8M]
	I/O ports at 5000 [size=256]
	Memory at f0e00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
	Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: radeon
	Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu
My machine does have 256MB VGA memory
Yet again I wonder why do I have only 6.914 gb memory available out of 8 GB.

Code: Select all

 free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           6914        3056        1507          36        2350        3523
Swap:          5103           0        5103
If I have helped you solve a problem, please add [SOLVED] to your first post title, it helps other users looking for help.
Regards,
Deepak

Mint 21.1 Cinnamon 64 bit with AMD A6 / 8GB
Mint 21.1 Cinnamon AMD Ryzen3500U/8gb
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