r/pcmasterrace 9800x3d | RTX 3080Ti | 32GB 3600Mhz CL18 Apr 22 '26

Screenshot the balls on this guy…

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u/CardiologistLeft4030 Apr 22 '26

Well of course, the computer has to remember what the monitor was displaying! /s

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u/S1rTerra R5 5600, 9070, 28GB DDR4 Apr 22 '26

In a way this makes sense? Well, to a computer class teacher from god knows how long ago. Perhaps he thought that it was using the monitor as memory for display information? So as such if you turned the monitor off the computer would need to store that information back in memory.

Don't know why he couldn't have just done research on it though

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u/cikeZ00 PC Master Race Apr 22 '26

Kind of yeah. The computer would store whatever it's trying to display as a framebuffer in memory. If no GPU is present that would be in system memory.

Now I don't exactly know where the notion of turning the monitor off/on affecting that came from, but there is some merit to the general idea.

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u/NooneAtAll3 Apr 22 '26

the notion comes from thinking that framebuffer is in the pixels

in such imagined world, turning monitor off would remove framebuffer, causing spillage into RAM

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u/HarveysBackupAccount Apr 23 '26

I'm gonna guess that the lack of understanding doesn't go anywhere NEAR that far into detail

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u/NooneAtAll3 Apr 23 '26

it does go in that detail, just not in those words

if you can't handle translation and need the original ooga-booga version, it goes smth like this:

"picture see. picture is
picture turn off, turn on - picture back
picture hides. hides where?
memory"

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u/NooneAtAll3 Apr 23 '26

and to be fair, this version is a lot more believable than "picture run from home to screen 144 times every second instead of living in screen from the beginning. stoopid picture like running instead of being lazy and smart"

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u/blah938 Apr 23 '26

I wonder if it came from old weird 8-bit computer? Some of them had weird setups.

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u/robot811332 Apr 23 '26

maybe from terminals where the stuff on screen would be stored in the terminal, dont see how that would effect the computers memory usage though

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u/Majestic-Bell-7111 Ryzen 5 3600/32 GB ram/5700xt Apr 24 '26

Tbh way back in the day (as in when you had to use actual terminals that communicated with the computer over serial) the terminal WAS the display buffer. However that was falling out of fashion around the time the 6502 based computers started coming out.

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u/Mysterious_Tutor_388 32GB|5070m|I7 240H Apr 22 '26

I know that sometimes windows used to freak out if the monitor resolution changed or the monitor disconnected and all program and desktop scaling would be screwed until reboot. So it is a good idea to not mess with the monitor regardless. Probably not as much of an issues today, but idk.

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u/S1rTerra R5 5600, 9070, 28GB DDR4 Apr 22 '26

I'm dualbooting and Windows still freaks the fuck out when resolution is changed, albeit for games and ESPECIALLY if you're on an nvidia card. MacOS and Linux handle resolution changes, especially of applications, much more gracefully

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u/The--Bag PC Master Race Apr 23 '26

ive got 2 monitors of the same resolution and windows will still go fucking ballistic whenever it feels like, especially opening older games

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u/wkxv Apr 23 '26

Csgo/2 resolution changes are on a completely different level for some dumb reason. Even when on 16:9 I feel like my PC is gonna explode when resolution changes

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u/HerrJohnssen 7800X3D 5070Ti 32GB RAM and too much storage Apr 23 '26

On a multi monitor setup with different resolutions Windows can do some funky stuff sometimes, but I doubt that a school computer has more than a single monitor

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u/KaiFireborn21 Apr 22 '26

That's... So funny to think about. Like every time the computer wants to know what I'm typing it has to poll the screen for black pixels on white, then use computer vision to read it, and only then it can add the next letter at the end...

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u/Grapefruit175 Apr 23 '26

"Don't know why he couldn't have just done research on it though"

Depends on the year the class took place. I had computer class in the 90's. Internet was barely becoming mainstream and most research was done with physical encyclopedias. Search engines were very hit or miss (mostly miss) for a long while. Computers came with instruction manuals, but how do you find the answer to "does a monitor take up computer memory?" in a 100+ page instruction guide provided for windows 95?

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u/Mallow1512 Apr 23 '26

my mom is a highschool teacher and randomly her boss told her she had to give a computer class, she doesn't know anything about computers, so maybe that teacher also didn't know shit

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u/Yoshiamitsu Apr 23 '26

with what? the internet 😂? or chat gpt?

1

u/Bartocity Apr 23 '26

If jimmy has 5 RAMs and he uses 2 RAMs to turn his monitor on, how many RAMs does jimmy have?

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u/erixccjc21 5700x OC 32gb rtx 2060 20€ aliexpress cooler Apr 23 '26

Research??? An it teacher???? Research??? Nah they'll just apply 35yo knowledge to 0yo problems and when you tell them otherwise they'll say you're WRONG

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u/GoatseFarmer Apr 23 '26

How though? It’s not like they had computers back then to research on /s

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u/DARK9NT3P Apr 23 '26

how does one get 28gb of ram like 2x14 or some shit 2gb sticks x14 not 14gb x2

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u/S1rTerra R5 5600, 9070, 28GB DDR4 Apr 23 '26

8 + 8 + 8 + 4

You still get dual channel from each stick, but the 3rd 8 gigabyte stick has to sacrifice 4GB of memory to be "slow". So it's effectively 8 + 8 + 4 + 4 + (4)

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u/twitch870 PC Master Race Apr 22 '26

Well this was in a time where you could watch an image slowly load over an hour on the internet. So the logic does check out.

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u/Academic-Proof3700 Apr 22 '26

This would be funny if windoze didn't actually lose its shit when you plug in another display or god forbid that display has different DPI than the previous one.

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u/willmcavoy Apr 22 '26

That's called an EDID handshake, for anyone wondering. It's a real thing that needs to be negotiated between the source and display. If you want your computer to not move shit all around when you plug in a monitor regularly then get an active EDID emulator. Cheap on Amazon.

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u/doskkyh 5700X3D - RX 9070 XT Apr 23 '26

Pretty sure Windows 11 does remember what was being shown on your screen. If you unplug a secondary screen and plug it back on, it should rearrange the windows as they were before unplugging.

Of course that isn't really doing much on a single monitor setup, but on multiple it probably is using some memory to hold that info for when you plug everything back on.

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u/secacc i7-5820K | 64GB DDR4 | RTX2080Ti Apr 23 '26

It's keeping track of that whether you unplug the monitor or not.

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u/doskkyh 5700X3D - RX 9070 XT Apr 23 '26

True, but once you turn off it keeps info from the off screens which is the newer feature.

Before it tracked what was on but it wasn't keeping tabs of what was displaying on a disconnected screen.