Video card confusion

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xxkidofemericaxx

New Member
I have a Dell E1505 notebook with an ATI Mobility Radeon X1300 video card. When I ordered my notebook, the video card was said to have an onboard memory of 128mb. But when I opened up ATI Catalyst and looked at the card info, it says that the adapter actually has 256mb. So which one is it? 256 or 128? Plus, I've searched online for the Mobility X1300 card, and I couldn't find any of them that has 256mb of memory. They all have 128. Also, when I enterd Dell's BIOS, which sucks because there's only so many things in there I can access, and the AGP controller is not one of them. It says that my video card only has 64mb of memory, which really confuses me. If someone here knows what's going on with this, could you hekp me out? I'm trying to get my video card to use all of the memery it has, and knowing exactly how much it has would be a great start. Thanks!
 
Haven't dealt with laptops much, but I do have some ideas.

As for the 128/256MB thing, my guess would be that it can utilize 256MB but has 128 MB onboard, which I believe just means that it can run 256MB applications, but not as well, as it only has 128MB to easily access.

As for the BIOS... I'm unsure. Possibly it could be reading it wrong, but I don't know.
 
It might be the AGP aperture size. That is the same for my 7900GT, it says it has 512MB when it really only have 256MB onboard.
 
all this different reading is because the graphic cards take some from your RAM... x1300 says 128mb because it has 128mb on its own memory but when ATI Catalyst report 256mb, its because the card can take another 128mb from your RAM to boost its performance for games and other stuff... i believe this is called HyperMemory in ATI whereas in NVidia it is called TurboCache...

they are basically the same thing... grabbing some memory from RAM to boost the performance of the graphic cards...
 
The x1300 has 64MB of onboard memory, and uses another 64MB from the system RAM when needed for a total of 128MB.

The x1400 has 128MB onboard, and another 128MB which it can take from the system RAM, for a total of 256MB.
 
it is most likely integrated which means the video card has 128mb on the card it self but is stealing another 128 from main memory
 
xxxalpinexxx80 said:
it is most likely integrated which means the video card has 128mb on the card it self but is stealing another 128 from main memory
Click to expand...
The x1300/x1400 series arent integrated, they are dedicated video cards. But if it needs more then what the onboard RAM is capable of holding, it will use some system RAM, however it's more effective then normal shared memory, since it utilizes HyperMemory. Also, unlike integrated cards, video cards with HM (like the x1300/x1400) dont set aside a certain amount of RAM, so if you look at your free RAM you will see it all there, it only uses it if it has to.
 
so basically itll use 256mb automatically if it has to... meaning that i wouldnt have to change the settings or anything for it to do so right? so what about the BIOS reporting that it only has 64mb? is there anything AGP settings in the BIOS that i could change? the Dell BIOS sucks!
 
xxkidofemericaxx said:
so basically itll use 256mb automatically if it has to... meaning that i wouldnt have to change the settings or anything for it to do so right? so what about the BIOS reporting that it only has 64mb? is there anything AGP settings in the BIOS that i could change? the Dell BIOS sucks!
Click to expand...
It reports 64MB because thats how much memory is both onboard, and how much can be used for HyperMemory. It can't be changed, and usually it doesnt even use the HM, it just uses what it has onboard.

And I dont know why it's reporting that you have 256MB, when you should only have 128MB combined. But Windows may just not be reading it right, since it says I have 382MB of VRAM.
 
xxkidofemericaxx said:
the x1300 has 128mb of onboard memory...
Click to expand...
The x1300 only has 64MB of onboard RAM, however it can utilize up to 256MB total via the system RAM. The x1400 has 128MB of onboard RAM, and can utilize up to 256MB.

Straight from dell:
dell_gpuecs.jpg

dell_gpu_specs.jpg
 
ohhh i see. thanks for the explanation. so if the x1300 and x1400 really have no differences between them, except for the fact that the x1400 has more on-board memory than the x1300, then both cards are virtually the same card right? what i mean is, would having more local memory but the same limit of total memory give the x1400 any kind of edge over the x1300 in terms of performance and graphics? thanks again!
 
Well it should edge out the X1300 very slightly because when you run on of onborad memory, extra info will go to the system RAM and when you run out of system RAM it will go to the pagefile, so the lag will be when info are being transferred between these locations.
 
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