Radeon RS482 video memory changing

[Alex Deucher]

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 8:18 AM, Dark Guard <darkgfan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greetings guys.
>
> In first place, I want to say a great «thanks!» to you all. Your work at the
> field of X programming and creation of the perfect & stable video drivers is
> really outstanding!
>
> But, unfortunately, a little occasion with video has been observing on my
> laptop.
>
> The cover story:
>       Recently, I forced my Dell Inspiron 1501n up with a new
> LinuxMint_x86_x64 release as well as x86-free-radeon driver. Before this
> migration, I used PCLinuxOS which have x86_32 support and Ati proprietary
> driver also included. My laptop, mentioned above, contains Turion MK-36
> (x86_64), 1 Gb of Ram & Xpress 200M IGP.
> I didn't make much attention of free ram available before, but due to
> switching to x86_64 I had to.
>
> Certainly, the performance raised up, but the system free memory became an
> extremely low (I expected a variety of decrementation, but not in so
> terrifying amount). Therefore, I tried to change the situation by lowering a
> video memory range.
>
> By default, there are 256 Mbs of UMA+SidePort memory the system reserves to.
> This option merely is not presented in BIOS & in the official Catalist
> Control Center for linux(in my old distributive by the way) is not presented
> too.
>
> I've read a plenty of docs - Xorg mailing list archives, FAQ, all radeon's
> driver guideline, but the only stuff I have found to play with - is option
> «VideoRam» / «in Kb» in device section of xorg.conf (and unfortunately it
> doesn't work).
>
> The question:
>        Is there any possibility to minimize a video ram value using
> x86-free-radeon or for now it's not available?
>

The only way to change the amount of ram used for vram is via a bios option.

Alex

> The output of uname, xorg.log & dmesg:
>
> uname -a
> Linux laptop 2.6.32-21-generic #32-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 16 08:09:38 UTC 2010
> x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> dmesg | grep drm
>
> [    0.000000] Linux version 2.6.32-21-generic (buildd at yellow) (gcc version
> 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) ) #32-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 16 08:09:38 UTC 2010
> (Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2)
> [    0.973135] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
> [    2.046113] [drm] radeon defaulting to kernel modesetting.
> [    2.046117] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled.
> [    2.050797] [drm] radeon: Initializing kernel modesetting.
> [    2.050876] [drm] register mmio base: 0xB0100000
> [    2.050878] [drm] register mmio size: 65536
> [    2.051233] [drm] GPU reset succeed (RBBM_STATUS=0x00000140)
> [    2.051246] [drm:rs400_gart_adjust_size] *ERROR* Forcing to 32M GART size
> (because of ASIC bug ?)
> [    2.051250] [drm] Generation 2 PCI interface, using max accessible memory
> [    2.051252] [drm] radeon: VRAM 256M
> [    2.051254] [drm] radeon: VRAM from 0x30000000 to 0x3FFFFFFF
> [    2.051256] [drm] radeon: GTT 32M
> [    2.051258] [drm] radeon: GTT from 0x40000000 to 0x41FFFFFF
> [    2.051281] [drm] radeon: irq initialized.
> [    2.051516] [drm] Detected VRAM RAM=256M, BAR=256M
> [    2.051522] [drm] RAM width 128bits DDR
> [    2.051655] [drm] radeon: 256M of VRAM memory ready
> [    2.051657] [drm] radeon: 32M of GTT memory ready.
> [    2.051679] [drm] GART: num cpu pages 8192, num gpu pages 8192
> [    2.052077] [drm] radeon: 2 quad pipes, 1 z pipes initialized.
> [    2.052095] [drm] radeon: cp idle (0x10000C03)
> [    2.052142] [drm] Loading R300 Microcode
> [    2.056474] [drm] radeon: ring at 0x0000000040000000
> [    2.056496] [drm] ring test succeeded in 1 usecs
> [    2.056629] [drm] radeon: ib pool ready.
> [    2.056706] [drm] ib test succeeded in 0 usecs
> [    2.056837] [drm] Panel ID String: SEC
> [    2.056839] [drm] Panel Size 1280x800
> [    2.056882] [drm] Radeon Display Connectors
> [    2.056884] [drm] Connector 0:
> [    2.056885] [drm]   VGA
> [    2.056888] [drm]   DDC: 0x68 0x68 0x68 0x68 0x68 0x68 0x68 0x68
> [    2.056889] [drm]   Encoders:
> [    2.056891] [drm]     CRT1: INTERNAL_DAC2
> [    2.056893] [drm] Connector 1:
> [    2.056894] [drm]   LVDS
> [    2.056896] [drm]   DDC: 0x198 0x198 0x19c 0x19c 0x1a0 0x1a0 0x1a4 0x1a4
> [    2.056898] [drm]   Encoders:
> [    2.056900] [drm]     LCD1: INTERNAL_LVDS
> [    2.207975] [drm] fb mappable at 0xC0040000
> [    2.207979] [drm] vram apper at 0xC0000000
> [    2.207981] [drm] size 4096000
> [    2.207982] [drm] fb depth is 24
> [    2.207984] [drm]    pitch is 5120
> [    2.208225] fb0: radeondrmfb frame buffer device
> [    2.208252] [drm] Initialized radeon 2.0.0 20080528 for 0000:01:05.0 on
> minor
>
> P.S. xorg.conf is inserted as file
>
> With best regards, Sergey.
>
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