It's a pc chips 810lmr mobo using a sis chipset. I just bought a
scanner and find myself running out of Ram (just a little). My two
Dimm slots are full with 1x512Mb and 1x128Mb of SD Ram.
I thought adding a dedicated graphics card would free up memory and
also take some of the load off the cpu(?). What do you think about
the last part of that sentence?
Yes it should free up memory, but you must be manipulating some fairly
large images for the (<=64MB) shared system memory to make much of a
difference in a system already having 640MB. Certainly the shared
memory is slowing it down some, though it isn't really increasing the
load on the CPU, only the memory bus, perhaps the northbridge a little
bit (I'm uncertain of that, have no hands-on experience with Sis 730
video). With 640MB you should just about be able to scan and edit a
full bed 300DPI image with no virtual memory/swapping, but of course
it would also depend on the other tasks, memory load outside of the
imaging job.
The primary reason an integrated video will increase load on the CPU
is when it has less hardware funcitonality, and in 3D gaming there is
software doing the T&L, opposed to a DX8, 9, video card capable of
doing it "in hardware".
However, if you're running out of memory, so I presume the page/swap
file is being used, you may see more of a benefit by adding more main
memory, or do you mean that the manipulation of the image is
"sluggish" when scrolling around in it at magnified zoom? In that
case a video card with a lot of memory can help a lot.
I think I might go with a Radeon 7000 64Mb from ebuyer as its less
than £30.
I would monitor the paging file and see how much it changes when
you're scanning/editing the larger images, to determine whether a
system memory upgrade is beneficial.
Perhaps a video card would benefit you, I can't be certain not having
used the Sis 730 video, not knowing how it compares to most other
integrated video.
Dave
