Shared Video RAM on HP Vista Notebook
April 25, 2007 9:16 PM Subscribe
WindowsVista : How do I determine and modify how much of my HP notebook's RAM is shared with my video card? Can it even be done???
G'day All,
I have this HP notebook.
It comes with Vista Business and the specs state that it has :
NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7400 with up to 256MB memory (128MB delicated + 128MB shared memory).
The "up to" part implies that it can be modified. Any clues on how I can see what the current status is and how I can change this shared portion?
I'm a software developer and setting tinkerer so I'm comfortable with getting my hands dirty, but I just can't work out how to do this!
P.S. The BIOS settings are very minimal (pretty much just the time and boot order)....
Cheers.
G'day All,
I have this HP notebook.
It comes with Vista Business and the specs state that it has :
NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7400 with up to 256MB memory (128MB delicated + 128MB shared memory).
The "up to" part implies that it can be modified. Any clues on how I can see what the current status is and how I can change this shared portion?
I'm a software developer and setting tinkerer so I'm comfortable with getting my hands dirty, but I just can't work out how to do this!
P.S. The BIOS settings are very minimal (pretty much just the time and boot order)....
Cheers.
I would assume that if you allocate texture RAM it will first come out of the dedicated video ram, and then after that runs it out would use system memory.
See if dxdiag tells you anything. It's already installed and in your path so it's easiest to get to from Start->Run...
posted by aubilenon at 9:26 PM on April 25, 2007
See if dxdiag tells you anything. It's already installed and in your path so it's easiest to get to from Start->Run...
posted by aubilenon at 9:26 PM on April 25, 2007
Response by poster: *** MORE FROM ABOVE ***
Don't know what happened to my post... but here's the rest anyway...
The specs of my laptop say :
NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7400 with up to 256MB memory (128MB delicated + 128MB shared memory)
The "UP TO" part implies that I the 128 shared can be modified, but I can't find anywhere how to do it.
Can anyone enlighten me please!!?!??!
I'm a software developer and tinkerer, so I don't have any issues with meddling and I know my way around. The BIOS is very minimal - pretty much gives only the ability to change the system time and boot sequence...
Any thoughts appreciated!
Cheers.
posted by paterg at 9:36 PM on April 25, 2007
Don't know what happened to my post... but here's the rest anyway...
The specs of my laptop say :
NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7400 with up to 256MB memory (128MB delicated + 128MB shared memory)
The "UP TO" part implies that I the 128 shared can be modified, but I can't find anywhere how to do it.
Can anyone enlighten me please!!?!??!
I'm a software developer and tinkerer, so I don't have any issues with meddling and I know my way around. The BIOS is very minimal - pretty much gives only the ability to change the system time and boot sequence...
Any thoughts appreciated!
Cheers.
posted by paterg at 9:36 PM on April 25, 2007
RivaTuner might let you disable TurboCache, or at least set the amount of shared memory to zero.
posted by krisjohn at 10:59 PM on April 25, 2007
posted by krisjohn at 10:59 PM on April 25, 2007
Don't know how it is now, but back in the day I always saw this: Windows din't even see the shared memory. So if your laptop has 1024 MB RAM and shares 64 MB, your System control panel will report 1024 - 64 = 960 MB. Seeing how off your RAM is from a "round number" like 0.5, 1, 1.5 GB is a decent indicator.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 11:16 PM on April 25, 2007
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 11:16 PM on April 25, 2007
The "UP TO" part implies that I the 128 shared can be modified, but I can't find anywhere how to do it.
I don't think the Up To means that it's user definable. I believe it's a dynamic thing that is somehow managed by the video "card"*, motherboard, and/or operating system and is dependent on the graphics need at the time. As aubilenon noted the graphics will first use the dedicated 128 MB video RAM and, if needed, expand to use up to 128 MB system RAM. It does it in this fashion because the dedicated video RAM is much faster than the system RAM.
Having said all that I imagine that it is possible to assign more RAM to the card all the time, or have some way to define it as you like. Someone out there may have figured out a hack or created a program or something to do what you want. But I'm not sure you'll gain any more performance, unless the system isn't good at managing that on it's own. If you truly feel your graphics are subpar the "upgrade" is a new computer that doesn't use hybrid graphics (see below) and has a larger amount of dedicated video RAM.
*This is actually most probably a hybrid setup where the graphics are on the motherboard but do contain separate video RAM like a dedicated card would. You can learn more from this Wikipedia article, Hybrid solutions (3.3) being of particular interest. You might also find this Tom's Hardware article on graphics interesting. It discusses, among other things, memory, the amount of which isn't necessarily a limiting factor in many situations.
posted by 6550 at 1:05 AM on April 26, 2007
I don't think the Up To means that it's user definable. I believe it's a dynamic thing that is somehow managed by the video "card"*, motherboard, and/or operating system and is dependent on the graphics need at the time. As aubilenon noted the graphics will first use the dedicated 128 MB video RAM and, if needed, expand to use up to 128 MB system RAM. It does it in this fashion because the dedicated video RAM is much faster than the system RAM.
Having said all that I imagine that it is possible to assign more RAM to the card all the time, or have some way to define it as you like. Someone out there may have figured out a hack or created a program or something to do what you want. But I'm not sure you'll gain any more performance, unless the system isn't good at managing that on it's own. If you truly feel your graphics are subpar the "upgrade" is a new computer that doesn't use hybrid graphics (see below) and has a larger amount of dedicated video RAM.
*This is actually most probably a hybrid setup where the graphics are on the motherboard but do contain separate video RAM like a dedicated card would. You can learn more from this Wikipedia article, Hybrid solutions (3.3) being of particular interest. You might also find this Tom's Hardware article on graphics interesting. It discusses, among other things, memory, the amount of which isn't necessarily a limiting factor in many situations.
posted by 6550 at 1:05 AM on April 26, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by pompomtom at 9:25 PM on April 25, 2007