System76 and Intel GMA

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 10:48 am

Since Dann has a System76 laptop, I wanted to know, did you buy some extra RAM for it or have an nVidia card in the system? It looks like the Intel GMA integrated graphics uses system memory, and I would think that might degrade performance with only 512 MB of RAM. I could obviously be wrong here, though, since I know that the beryl/compiz effects aren't terribly taxing. Basically, if I buy one, I'm debating about whether I should go with a gig of RAM.

I doubt I'd do anything processor intensive. People make fun of the Celeron, but does the dual core really offer such a great improvement on power consumption or does it now really help out with virtualization? I'm way behind on this type of thing, and have generally stuck with AMD's offerings, and I'm sure I'll continue to do so on my desktop systems.

allix · Post by **allix** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 12:01 pm

you can have as much ram as you like , it will not help graphics performance as much as a dedicated video card can.

ram does make compiling much quicker if your a gcc screensaver fanboy , i also noticed converting video is quicker with more ram.

Celeron is fine if you don;t have the money for a dual core.
The whole core race has only started, in a few years we will all be using vim with 999 ^ 99 cores

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 1:32 pm

Thanks Allix. I was certain that shared memory could never yield the performance of dedicated video card memory, but I was thinking more about the desktop environment. I thought that Gnome could easily consume 512 MB of RAM, so that if the video card reserves some of that, the performance might suffer. With that in mind, I wondered if I'd really need a gig to give some breathing space since some RAM would be taken by the GMA.

allix · Post by **allix** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 2:00 pm

adding as much ram as you need would never hurt, bare in mind i was reading on the freebsd mailinglist from someone who asked "I'm prepared to run FreeBSD-6.2 amd64 on an AMD Athlon64 x2 (dualcore)
512Kx2 3800 box as server. What will be an ideal RAM capacity to be
installed."

......... snip ...snip.......
If your Athlon64 box is an outdated Socket 939, you should be aware of
the fact, that the memory controller slows down its speed from DDR400 to
DDR333 and command-T cycle from 1T to 2T if you apply 4GB! In most cases
you still are able to run them stable with 200/400 MHz (high quality
memory), but command cycle latency is then set to 2T. If memory speed
isn't the point, forget about what I said.

The other replies were basically "depends on what you are going to serve on the box" and some scenarios were given.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 3:03 pm

512 is definately enough to run a system. I have 512MB at work and 1GB at home both running Sabayon. My 1GB is noticably faster dispite running a lot more on it (like Beagle which takes a lot of resources). I'd go to 1GB if it is of a reasonable price but it is by no means required. But if you use the command line most of the time don't bother.

schotty · Post by **schotty** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 3:00 am

I run on my desktop 2GB and for regular apps and desktop usage I would say whatever you can afford 1GB or more. I do have an nVIDIA 7600 if that matters. On my Toshiba, I have 512MB and I cant wait to blow some money on getting more RAM. GNOME is slow, KDE is slow, Fluxbox is not. Nor is the CLI ;D

allix · Post by **allix** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 7:05 am

schotty wrote:I run on my desktop 2GB and for regular apps and desktop usage I would say whatever you can afford 1GB or more. I do have an nVIDIA 7600 if that matters. On my Toshiba, I have 512MB and I cant wait to blow some money on getting more RAM. GNOME is slow, KDE is slow, Fluxbox is not. Nor is the CLI ;D

I have 512MB on a laptop and kde runs fine, then again i am running FreeBSD on it

drag · Post by **drag** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 9:01 am

I donno. I wouldn't want a machine with 512 megs of ram in it if it was brand new.

I wouldn't mind having one though. If money is tight then I'd at least make sure that if you got 512 megs of ram that there would be a open slot for upgrading more ram later.

And keep in mind that if you let it your GMA will suck up to 200 or so megs of ram.

Things that'll also eat up ram is if you want to have desktop search through beagle and have that fancy deskbar applet.

3D desktop's will take more ram to run also.

Also if you want to run 64bits that'll use a lot more ram.

I run a GMA 950 video card on my desktop (because I've developed a strong distaste for propriatory drivers)

It's perfectly adiquate for day to day tasks and will provide good 2d and 3d support out of the box. It's going to be, by far, the best supported chipsets for Linux now and into the future simply because Intel now hires X hackers to work on their drivers.

As far as 3d performance goes it's perfect for Compiz or even Beryl. I run those, no sweat. The only thing I miss out on is the ability to use 'water' effects in beryl. With just regular compiz the cpu load is less then a normal 2d desktop.

For games the upper limit to the sorts you can play with it in Linux will be Wolfenstien or Nexuiz. With the eye candy turned down and such those are mostly playable.

Games like Tremulous or Warsow, which focus on gameplay, they run no sweat. I've played flight gear flight simulator, Torcs, and such things without much problems at all.

However the idea of it running Doom3 comfortably is laughable.

If you get the machine I can give you some tips for getting the best performance out of your little onboard card possible...

So basicly if you want games get Nvidia, if you want a stable desktop stick with the onboard.