Can someone explain the graphic in use of the ATI Raedon Xpress 1150card

[kd833]

Before I added system RAM (now 2GB) to my notebook, the system RAM
count and the video frame buffer count made some sort of sense. Now I
can't figure out what XP and ATI is telling about my system RAM and
video RAM configuration. This is what I see now: XP system props says
system RAM = 1.98GB, XP display props says video adaptor size = 700MB,
ATI video display porps says video frame buffer = 16MB. Nothing seems
to add up. The card specs says it will support 256MB of video RAM.
Where is the 700MB adaptor size coming from? I can find no ultility
that wil tell me how much video RAM is "in use" or tell me how much
system RAM is being used by the video card other than believing the
16MBs has been set aside for the video card. Is there something like
that out there? Please point me to it. TIA

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

* kd833:

Before I added system RAM (now 2GB) to my notebook, the system RAM
count and the video frame buffer count made some sort of sense. Now I
can't figure out what XP and ATI is telling about my system RAM and
video RAM configuration. This is what I see now: XP system props says
system RAM = 1.98GB, XP display props says video adaptor size = 700MB,
ATI video display porps says video frame buffer = 16MB. Nothing seems
to add up. The card specs says it will support 256MB of video RAM.
Where is the 700MB adaptor size coming from? I can find no ultility
that wil tell me how much video RAM is "in use" or tell me how much
system RAM is being used by the video card other than believing the
16MBs has been set aside for the video card. Is there something like
that out there? Please point me to it. TIA

Your Radeon Xpress 1150 is a shared memory solution that has no own
graphics memory. It uses a part of the system memory for graphics, the
amount it uses is dynamically assigned. The 1150 can allocate up to
256MB as graphics memory. The ATI control panel shows you how much
currently is in use (16MB). Windowsxp shows you the maximum amount
useable for graphics (graphics memory + size available for texture
swapping into standard RAM) which is 700MB.

All these numbers are meaningless as the Xpress 1150 is very slow and
hardly useable for demanding 3D applications or games, and for 2D
application (where it is fast enough) very little memory is actually
used. So I wouldn't worry about that.



Benjamin

 

[kd833]

* kd833:


Your Radeon Xpress 1150 is a shared memory solution that has no own
graphics memory. It uses a part of the system memory for graphics, the
amount it uses is dynamically assigned. The 1150 can allocate up to
256MB as graphics memory. The ATI control panel shows you how much
currently is in use (16MB). Windowsxp shows you the maximum amount
useable for graphics (graphics memory + size available for texture
swapping into standard RAM) which is 700MB.

All these numbers are meaningless as the Xpress 1150 is very slow and
hardly useable for demanding 3D applications or games, and for 2D
application (where it is fast enough) very little memory is actually
used. So I wouldn't worry about that.

Benjamin

Thanks. So the 700MB is not really stolen from the system. Windows is
just indicating that 700MB could be available for graphics if needed.
You are correct about the 2D/3D uses. This is just a business PC and
not use for gaming.