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Bitcoin => Development & Technical Discussion => Topic started by: Xenland on May 02, 2011, 11:01:26 AM



Title: Do miners make use of all the memory in graphics card say 4gb?
Post by: Xenland on May 02, 2011, 11:01:26 AM
Simple question do miners make use of all the memory or do lanuages like python limit stuff like that? Im thinking of upgrading my card and I would like to know if i should get one with more memory.


Title: Re: Do miners make use of all the memory in graphics card say 4gb?
Post by: LMGTFY on May 02, 2011, 11:07:50 AM
Simple question do miners make use of all the memory or do lanuages like python limit stuff like that? Im thinking of upgrading my card and I would like to know if i should get one with more memory.
Not speaking from experience, but the consensus seems to be "no". Go for the card with less memory - both cards will hash at the same rate (all else being equal), but the card with more memory will use more power - both fixed (cost of card) and variable (cost of electricity) will be higher.


Title: Re: Do miners make use of all the memory in graphics card say 4gb?
Post by: wumpus on May 02, 2011, 04:11:06 PM
No, it doesn't matter, mining uses no GPU memory. Go for the fastest card, not the one with the most memory.



Title: Re: Do miners make use of all the memory in graphics card say 4gb?
Post by: Xenland on May 02, 2011, 09:00:23 PM
No, it doesn't matter, mining uses no GPU memory. Go for the fastest card, not the one with the most memory.




That sounds like minors are inefficient then but i could be wrong. Why would manufactures add more memory if its not going to good use? My only thought is that its really for videogames to save non-visible data, like what's behind the player or texture memory or somthing but if thats the case it still sounds like minors can put this to some more efficient use no?


Title: Re: Do miners make use of all the memory in graphics card say 4gb?
Post by: Luke-Jr on May 02, 2011, 09:32:42 PM
Hmm, is it possible to hijack the unused video RAM for swap? :D


Title: Re: Do miners make use of all the memory in graphics card say 4gb?
Post by: LMGTFY on May 02, 2011, 09:38:42 PM
No, it doesn't matter, mining uses no GPU memory. Go for the fastest card, not the one with the most memory.

That sounds like minors are inefficient then but i could be wrong. Why would manufactures add more memory if its not going to good use? My only thought is that its really for videogames to save non-visible data, like what's behind the player or texture memory or somthing but if thats the case it still sounds like minors can put this to some more efficient use no?
Well, you could argue that miners are efficient in their use of memory :-) Miners simply don't need much memory. You're quite right as to why manufactures provide the memory - the primary market for GPUs is for video, not OpenCL work. (While posting this, Luke-Jr posted about using the memory for swap, if that's possible - and I suspect it's not trivial - it would be very cool).


Title: Re: Do miners make use of all the memory in graphics card say 4gb?
Post by: Grinder on May 02, 2011, 10:09:57 PM
Hmm, is it possible to hijack the unused video RAM for swap? :D
It seems to be in Linux, but I haven't tried it yet. http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Using_Graphics_Card_Memory_as_Swap


Title: Re: Do miners make use of all the memory in graphics card say 4gb?
Post by: Luke-Jr on May 02, 2011, 10:16:00 PM
That's old and doesn't cover fglrx :/

Actually, with Radeons using GDDR5, I'd want it to be the MAIN memory, not swap... :P