RAM helping the graphic card??

W

Wiltrold

New Member
Hello all

I have heard that if you have a PC with Vista 32-bit and 4 GB of ram. Then the extra GB of ram will go and help the graphic card instead? is this true?

Thanks
 
32 bit Vista can address a maximum of 3.25GB of RAM. The rest of the addresses are reseerved for system devices. One of those devices is the video card and the RAM on the video card. So it is likely that if you get a video card with a lot of RAM on it that Vista will have less RAM available to it. If you has SP1, Vista still will show the full 4GB in system properties though.
 
the only time this is true, is if you have integrated graphics chip, then system ram acts as video ram.
but if you have a dedicated graphics card the extra system ram will not be added to the video ram.
it only helps if you alt+tab to another program while playing.
the game will stay in ram and take less time to bring back up again.
 
zombine210 said:
the only time this is true, is if you have integrated graphics chip, then system ram acts as video ram.
but if you have a dedicated graphics card the extra system ram will not be added to the video ram.
it only helps if you alt+tab to another program while playing.
the game will stay in ram and take less time to bring back up again.
Click to expand...

is ATI® Radeon™ HD 3670 integrated? Will I then get better perfomance in games?
 
is this a laptop or desktop?
if laptop, it's probably just the chipset, you can assign as much system memory to it up to 512mb.
if desktop, it's a dedicated graphics card and has its own memory.
 
So some system RAM is probably assigned to the graphics card, the problem I described earlier is present in all 32bit systems though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top