dedicated or shared?

the easiest way to tell is if you know how much ram is physically installed on your computer. (for example if you know you have 2 sticks of 256 then you have 512) Then right click on the My Computer icon and view properites. Under "General" at the bottom of the window it should say how much ram you have, if it matches your system ram then none of you system ram is allocated for video ram. Therefore dedicated. If it is displaying less ram then some is used for video.

Also you can go into bios on startup and check video settings.
 
What Penguin said is one of the most effective ways.

But if you're not sure about how much memory you have to begin with, the general rule of thumb is that if you have an actual video card (not integrated), then you have dedicated video memory. However some cards have turbocache/hypermemory, which uses a mixture of shared and dedicated video memory.
 
Under system info in system tools it says my video adapter has 128MB of RAM, the spec sheet for the adapter (ATI RADEON EXPRESS 200M) says it has 128 dedicated. However the computer has 2GB of ram but only 1.87GB is listed.
 
i have that same video card (200m) it is 128 dedicated but can use up to an additional 128 shared. It can be adjusted in the bios so you can leave it has a mixed 256 or drop to a dedicated 128 or anywhere in-between.
 
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