xjas wrote:^^ AFAIK lspci doesn't have anything to do with OpenGL, it just probes all the hardware on the PCI bus (which includes AGP & PCIe) directly
Ah yes, missed that vital piece in the puzzle o.0...
xjas wrote:It's an OLD command from way back before OpenGL was even a thing.
OpenGL isn't that new 😉 92/93-ish, which I think predates lspci somewhat.
shamino wrote:I don't think it's meant to report the full amount of memory on the card. I just tried that command on a system with a 1GB GT430 in it, and it reported the same 16MB "32-bit non-prefetchable" block that your Quadro2 reported. It also had a couple 64-bit ranges, but none of it added up to 1GB.
I think it's a reflection of how the card is mapped into system memory space, but the card's whole RAM isn't all mapped there. This would also be why using a 1GB card under WinXP32 doesn't chop off 1GB of addressable system memory.
The 3D programmers probably know more about how the memory mapping works.
Yes nVidia uses UMA so there is no explicit address for the frame buffer, it's one big black box, and rightfully so. Other than how you populate your vertex buffers (interleaving etc), no knoweldge of mem mapping required who knows what buffer is stored next to what texture etc.. who cares, thats the drivers job to do (hence why bad drivers can have such an ipmact on an actual gfx performance).
dexvx wrote:I mean, from a fab perspective, they are probably an identical die.
This was my understanding, Quadros also shipped with more mem? and perhaps better mem? So bit like Xeons to non-Xeons back int day, hand-picked better examples of tha same die 😀... or marketing BS?. The firmware was different and thus the drivers used at runtime and allowed stuff like multiple clipping planes, logic-operations, various anti-aliasing and overlays to be done in hardware rather than in software by the driver.
Tbh I have always pretty much worked with Quadros (because I don't have to buy them o.0), but I have always wondered what the differences were and if these could be justified by the ever increasing price-hike nV puts on this line... so I looked it up. Here is an nVidia document from '03 describing these differences, in case anyone was wondering what feature differences Quadros actually give over GeForces.
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail … and-quadro-gpus
These days GPGPU takes prescendence (increase of that is very much welcomed, and FP precision can be important), but no doubt there is still merit in Quadros IQ for just standard geometry display, and the ability to have shite loads of textures (labels etc) and raw vertex buffers in mem. CAD doesn't tend to need 'effects'...Worth it or not? I leave to the reader o.0