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Where'd my video memory go?

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Darwin:
PS to confirm the above, right click on "My Computer" and select properties. You'll see a screen that gives information about the version of windows that you're running, your processor and how much RAM you have installed and available to the system (not how much is free, the total that the system can access). If your video card shares (ie leeches) memory from your cache of RAM, then this number should be less than 1GB.

seedling:
Right, I completely understand what you're saying, but this is not what's going on.  I have another 'bargain priced' desktop with this configuration that does syphon off system memory.

I have 1GB of memory (untouched) available to me.  (i.e. displays 1.00GB in system properties)

What I have here is 1GB of RAM (which is not being syphoned) and a 256mb vid chip (see the above hardware reading for total memory as it is based of that single piece of hardware only) and yet only 64MB of memory is available for video.  This is what's baffling me; it almost seems as if the other memory on the vidchip is tucked away somehow.


edit: checking this site also verifies that this is an independant card (not shared/integrated)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=39568

Darwin:
I dunno... I *think* that you have a hybrid dedicated/integrated memory chip (split 64/182) that either only accesses your RAM if it needs to (and at the moment it doesn't need to and thus this isn't being reflected in system properites), or you need to go either into a utility accessed via your Control Panel (probably an ATI utility or even the dispaly properties cpl) or into your BIOS to configure how much RAM to set aside for video. I think the second scenario is more likely. As night_ed points out, the manufacturer's description of the chipset, while not abundantly clear, does seem to be saying that this chip is a hybrid.

Carol Haynes:
Have you checked video properties (Control Panel > Display) to see if there are any settings you can tweak. Failing that have you looked to see if there is an updated motherboard driver?

seedling:
I thought the same thing too: go into the BIOS check for shared vid memory, etc. but there is no such setting one way or the other.  In my other econo-desktop's BIOS, there's definitely a setting to allocate system memory to video, but not in this laptop (one way or the other).  :(

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