Advatnages of using VRAM?

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Advatnages of using VRAM?

IPete2 (Posted 2005) [#1]

Hi guys, How and when should I use VRAM setting on my models' textures? What are the advantages and disadvantages of setting the VRAM flag? Thanks. IPete2.

John Pickford (Posted 2005) [#2]

Speed is the advantage. Blitz will try to put stuff in VRAM anyway I think. The flag should be used for priorty stuff that YOU think should always be in there. In practice, the most-used textures are likely to be kept in VRAM anyway. The disadvantage might be that you force large, little-used textures in there leaving less space and cause more commonly used textures to be paged in and out a lot. Hurting performance. I'd just like to point out that I have no idea what I'm talking about. So I'll shut up.

Bouncer (Posted 2005) [#3]

Use only VRAM flag if your modifying your textures on the fly... eg. Copyrecting to textures or similar..

John Pickford (Posted 2005) [#4]

Why?

Damien Sturdy (Posted 2005) [#5]

It bees much faster.??

John Pickford (Posted 2005) [#6]

I thought you meant that was the ONLY time to use the flag.

Damien Sturdy (Posted 2005) [#7]

Well, its the only reason i can see too, but i wasnt the one who said it :p hehe

IPete2 (Posted 2005) [#8]

thanks guys! I have tried setting the flags for all my models textures, but it really has a hit on performance so I think I'll just let Blitz handle it on its own. Thanks for the information though, useful. regards, IPete2.

big10p (Posted 2005) [#9]

Yeah, using the VRAM flag on one of my machines speeds things up, on the other it actually slows things down. Go figure. :/

Ross C (Posted 2005) [#10]

Wel, the flag doesn't work on some cards i believe. Maybe because forcing stuff to VRAM if you don't have enough to cater for everything else, cause swapping slowdowns. As Bouncer says, it's useful if you modifying the textures in real time, like reading and writing to them. For reflections, real time manipulating ...etc