# Memory usage question (basic)



## narcolepsy (Oct 7, 2009)

Hi folks, after using my box for about a day, doing not overly memory intensive applications, I tried to run an HD movie on my machine.

both mplayer and vlc spat out errors about the machine being too slow. I then noticed there was only ~100MB free memory (I have 4GB on amd64) so I found this surprising.

Is this a true reflection of how much free memory I have?

Is there any way to check what's munching the megs?

Does it sound like I've done something wrong?

Any info would be appreciated


```
FreeBSD scrotum 7.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE #0: Fri May  1 07:18:07 UTC 2009     root@driscoll.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64
```


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## aragon (Oct 7, 2009)

Where are you seeing that you only have 100 MB free memory?

mplayer's too slow message always occurs because my system is too slow, not because there is insufficient memory.  What resolution and frame rate movie are you trying to play, at what resolution, with what hardware and what drivers?


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## vermaden (Oct 7, 2009)

@narcolepsy

Have you uses *mplayer* from packages or from ports?

Packaged *mplayer* does not have many things compiled in, so it runs almost all things by software, no xv acceleration and so, it so, then rebuild *mplayer* with appreciate options.


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## narcolepsy (Oct 8, 2009)

- saw the message when running "top"

- h/w is core2duo 2.5ghz, 4gb ddr800 ram, radeon 4870 (i suspect there is no hw accel on this?)

n


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## aragon (Oct 8, 2009)

narcolepsy said:
			
		

> - saw the message when running "top"



top displays "free" memory and "inactive" memory.



			
				narcolepsy said:
			
		

> - h/w is core2duo 2.5ghz, 4gb ddr800 ram, radeon 4870 (i suspect there is no hw accel on this?)


I think your card does have partial acceleration support.  Are you using the latest ati or radeonhd driver?  Is DRM enabled in your kernel?


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## aragon (Oct 8, 2009)

Try run this in an xterm:


```
xdpyinfo |grep -E "DRI|XVideo"
```


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## narcolepsy (Oct 19, 2009)

```
xdpyinfo |grep -E "DRI|XVideo"
    DRI2
    XFree86-DRI
    XVideo
```

Sry for the delay replying, i appreciate the help.


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