Why not?

[Guest]

Just a couple of crazy ideas I have about graphics cards.
I would like to see a program or a driver which would include something like cpuidle or rain for my voodoo3. The
heat it produces is quite considerable, and most of the time the card is doing nothing. It wouldn't hurt having a cooler system and it wouldn't hurt the environment eiher, energy saving is a green thought after all.

Second idea. Graphics cards harbor more and more memory.
When you work in 2d-mode, there's up to 63 megabytes or even more of memory just sitting there unused. Would it take a new set of drivers for the motherboard, graphics card or something in the operating system to share the memory on the graphics card with other applications than 3d-games? I wouldn't mind using the 14 MB of unused memory on my voodoo3 rather than virtual disk memory in Windows.

Comments?

 

[Guest]

that seems like a good idea to me. Although, I think the graphics ram is on a completely different bus and that might pose some diffilculty.

 

[Guest]

I'm not sure it's such a good idea--especially if you
want to multitask. The more seperated a system
is, the better. Your system will have to work hard
enough just allocating the shared memory back and forth between the card and the processor.

Noble thought though, I mean considering the environment and all. I personally like knowing that I've got excess
resources. Just me, though.

 

[Sihs]

I have to agree that it's not quite easy implementing the V-RAM thing. imho, your system won't blossom upon using the excess v-ram on your voodoo3 although it might give it a good push. But with another 60+ MB of the juicy ddr ram it might be a different story.
And about the heat, you can put your own fan somewhere to cool down the voodoo. I don't suppose the heat is out of factory specification except if you oc. or something. right?