TurboCache
Encyclopedia
NVIDIA's
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
TurboCache technology is a method of allowing video card
Video card
A video card, Graphics Card, or Graphics adapter is an expansion card which generates output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors...
s more available framebuffer
Framebuffer
A framebuffer is a video output device that drives a video display from a memory buffer containing a complete frame of data.The information in the memory buffer typically consists of color values for every pixel on the screen...
memory by using both onboard video memory and main system memory. Main memory is accessed using the high-bandwidth PCI-Express bus.
TurboCache was developed as a means to provide a better cost/performance ratio by reducing the amount of memory modules on the video card. According to NVIDIA, a GeForce 6200 with TurboCache will perform about four times better than the Intel GMA 900
Intel GMA
The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator, or GMA, is a series of Intel integrated graphics processors built into various motherboard chipsets....
. As with integrated graphics, the operating system may report a lower amount of main memory than is physically present when main memory is used.
When TurboCache was introduced on the GeForce 6200 with TurboCache, there was confusion over how much local memory a buyer could expect from the TurboCache enabled video card. This figure could lie between 16-128MiB
Mebibyte
The mebibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The binary prefix mebi means 220, therefore 1 mebibyte is . The unit symbol for the mebibyte is MiB. The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 2000 and has been accepted for use by all major...
, with NVIDIA listing only total memory from both video memory and main memory. Eventually, NVIDIA included only video memory sizes on marketing and packaging.
While TC can improve 3D quality in games using a great deal of video memory for texture rendering, performance of games utilizing a large percent of system RAM (such as EA Games' Battlefield series and their mods that typically consume 512MB-1GB RAM) can suffer dramatically on systems with 1GB RAM or below. Some users of such setups have attempted to disable TC. Such an option is not supported by NVIDIA's official drivers but can be accomplished using a registry modification for Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
users or a configuration file modification for X.Org Server
X.Org Server
X.Org Server refers to the X server release packages stewarded by the X.Org Foundation,which is hosted by freedesktop.org, and grants...
users.
A video card with TurboCache typically is slower in 3D benchmarks than a similar video card which has its own discrete video memory.