> Weird. I thought using hardware acceleration would decrease it, not > increase it...
Not really. Among other things, I think the video card's on-board memory shows up as system memory in some situations (including, apparently, this one). > Is the any chance in a future of an open source driver, ie. > independent of nVidia's implementation? In a way, there already is- I'm pretty sure the nv driver which comes with X is open-sourced, and correspondingly is more stable and well-behaved. On the other hand, it doesn't support hardware 3D. For the minority of us who care about hardware 3D, the nvidia driver probably works well enough that nobody would bother trying to start from scratch writing one. Moreover, it would be difficult to do so without running up against IP constraints. Convincing Nvidia that their value is in their hardware, not their APIs, and thereby convincing them to open-source the drivers they already have, seems like the most viable option to me. > All so, some thing else I found strange: The kernel module is still > getting used despite the fact I have rebooted and loaded X with the > standard nv driver. What loads the kernel module? I'm a little fuzzy on kernel-module auto-loading, but suffice it to say that it's in some init script somewhere, and isn't really being used. It will probably go away if you uninstall nvidia-kernel (though I haven't tried it, so caveat hacker). > pluto:~# dpkg -s device3dfx-source > Package: device3dfx-source > Status: install ok installed > Priority: extra > Section: graphics > Installed-Size: 68 > Maintainer: Zephaniah E. Hull <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Source: device3dfx > Version: 2000.11.02-0.1 > Depends: make, m4, debhelper > Recommends: kernel-package > Description: Device driver source for 3Dfx boards for 2.x kernels > This package is the source for the 3Dfx device driver to allow access > to 3Dfx boards without the user having root privileges. It should > work on 2.0/2.1/2.2/2.3/2.4 kernels and set the MTRR settings > correctly. It should also work with SMP kernels (2.1/2.2/2.3/2.4). Bingo. 3Dfx boards. You don't need it- it's just taking up room on your system. -- Geoffrey M. Romer [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin "I can't leave you alone with this man! He might be a tenor!" -Fred Astaire