256MB Video RAM Not Enough for Glass?

[Byron Watson]

I have a curious problem that I thought I'd share.

I have a PC (3Ghz CPU, 1 GB RAM), clean 8384.4 install, nVidia 2600 256 MB
RAM video card, and an Apple 23" monitor. Resolution is 1920x1200.

At that resolution, I can't get aero glass to turn on. At a lower
resolution, I can.

Does this mean that 256MB video RAM is not enough for 1920x1200 resolution
(32 bit color)?

 

[Tom Lake]

I have a curious problem that I thought I'd share.

I have a PC (3Ghz CPU, 1 GB RAM), clean 8384.4 install, nVidia 2600 256 MB
RAM video card, and an Apple 23" monitor. Resolution is 1920x1200.

At that resolution, I can't get aero glass to turn on. At a lower
resolution, I can.

Does this mean that 256MB video RAM is not enough for 1920x1200 resolution
(32 bit color)?

1920*1200*32/8 = 9216000 bytes needed. Clearly (no pun intended!) 256MB is
plenty.

There must be a driver issue involved.

Tom Lake

 

[Rick]

I think there is a serious problem with the
nVidia drivers. They appear to install on some
systems, but not on others. On my MSI K8T800
Neo2-F the nVidia drivers will not load
correctly for either x86 or x64. I get Glass at
1024 x 760 with 32-bit color on a 15 inch LCD
with the drivers included in Vista.

My guess is the drivers need to be updated, but
I can't find where on the nVidia site to post
feedback. I did on one page and received a
response that was the wrong place, but no info
about where the right place was.

 

[Guest]

Did you download the video drivers for Vista? I have no problems with mine,
runnign SLI with 2 7800GTX's on a 20" ACD HD, @ 1680x1050@32-bit

 

[Rick]

Yes. I downloaded the ones directly from the
nVidia web site, Version: 88.61. I acknowledged
that not all people are experiencing problems,
and some of the problem may lie with Vista, too.

 

[Conor]

I have a curious problem that I thought I'd share.

I have a PC (3Ghz CPU, 1 GB RAM), clean 8384.4 install, nVidia 2600 256 MB
RAM video card, and an Apple 23" monitor. Resolution is 1920x1200.

At that resolution, I can't get aero glass to turn on. At a lower
resolution, I can.

Does this mean that 256MB video RAM is not enough for 1920x1200 resolution
(32 bit color)?

No, it means you need the WDDM drivers from nVIDIA.

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP, OE/WM]

I have a curious problem that I thought I'd share.

I have a PC (3Ghz CPU, 1 GB RAM), clean 8384.4 install, nVidia 2600 256 MB
RAM video card, and an Apple 23" monitor. Resolution is 1920x1200.

At that resolution, I can't get aero glass to turn on. At a lower
resolution, I can.

Does this mean that 256MB video RAM is not enough for 1920x1200 resolution
(32 bit color)?

It's not the amount of RAM as much as whether or not the card supports
DirectX 9.

 

[Tom]

I agree with you. I have an ATI 9800 Pro 128meg card, and the glass works
fairly well, and sometimes it disappears, but this beta too. If I use
Firefox, it turns off for some reason, and I get a prompt as to that
happening.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

A number of programs will cause Glass to turn off when it detects an issue
caused by the program.

 

[SHS]

I have a curious problem that I thought I'd share.

It's not the amount of RAM as much as whether or not the card supports
DirectX 9.

Frank his card should support DirectX 9 after all his is a GF6 (6200) not 2600 he just got the number backwards.

 

[Neal]

It is the Nvidia drivers. I had to re-install Vista because of those
drivers. I am running on the MS drivers and I now have Glass running just
fine.

 

[Chris Altmann]

Although 256MB should be enough, the VRAM requirements are more extensive
than what you illustrate. Not taking into account any texture compression
being done by the hardware, you would potentially need that 8.7MB of VRAM
for every maximized application window plus some for the glass (presumably
shared among windows) and other incidentals. Then you need that much again
for the final composited scene.

Here's a great series of articles on how it works:
http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2006/03/25/561167.aspx

 

[Byron Watson]

I found that, for whatever reason, rerunning the performance rating program
caused the aero to turn on.

 

[Stephan Schaem]

Although 256MB should be enough, the VRAM requirements are more extensive
than what you illustrate. Not taking into account any texture compression
being done by the hardware, you would potentially need that 8.7MB of VRAM
for every maximized application window plus some for the glass (presumably
shared among windows) and other incidentals. Then you need that much again
for the final composited scene.

Vista is still windows95 like... allot of 'cheap' tricks and workaround to
make old/ 'legacy' application
works.

For the vram consumption, the wddm take care of swapping in/out of video
memory resources,
also AGP/PCI-Express allot texturing from system memory.
Even so phisical video memory is good for performance, but shouldn't be
needed for functionality.
To be noted, ATI dont have optimized driver yet for this usage on AGP system
(maybe even PCI-exp)

But its no wonder that opening a few windows take 100+ meg of system memory.

Micrososft could surely put a coupon for a 1gigabyte memory stick in their
Vista OS upgrade box.

In short, my view is that it will take a miracle for Vista to run as well
with 1gig as XP does with 512 meg.
And most people I know use 1 gig under XP... For the people that use 2 gig,
they have to cross over
and get a 64bit CPU.. hummm...

Stephan

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I have no idea what you are saying at the end, "For the people that use 2
gig,
they have to cross over and get a 64bit CPU.. hummm..."

I use 2GB of ram on all my XP x86 systems. They do not have 64bit cpu's.