Can I adjust my shared video ram?

[JohnPhoenix]

After editing this a few times I have Lots of questions. please try to answer them all. Thank You
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I have a CQ61-411WM Laptop with 4 gigs of DDR2 Ram. The graphics chip is an ATI 4200 HD. This chip is 128 shared memory up to 1 gig. ( on win 7 64 bit) I also understand with shared memory the higher speed ram the better for gaming. My 4 gigs is 800 MHZ which i understand is not shabby at all.

I have read that sometimes you can set the video ram in Bios and manually allocate a set amount of memory to be used for graphics processing.

But I cant find a setting for that in this Bios. I understand that laptop bois's have very limited features that are accessible to the user by design.. HP doesn't want you mucking about in a laptop bios like you can a desktop unit.

I have a 1 gig video card in my desktop and it rocks socks.

I want to be sure I can fully use all the 1 gig of shared memory for video. If I cannot adjust this in Bios.. how can I be sure it's using it?

Is there a software tool that will monitor this?

Also, everyone says shared video ram is slower. Why is this? What makes it slower..?

The speed seems good and I have had video cards that worked great for my desktop that had the same type and speed of ram as the main system ram.. so.. saying the shared memory is slow in that respect doesn't make since to me unless there are other factors I am not aware of.

EDIT:

Now I'm really confused. I used GPUZ and instead of the 128 dedicated memory my ATI 4200 HD should have, the tool reports I have 336 MB?.. what is going on here?

I looked at DXDIAG.exe and it says Total Aprox Memory is 1986 MB <-- What is this number? Is this my total shared max memory number?

Both of these are way above my specs info. My Specs --> http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...d=reg_R1002_US... Don't forget I added 2 gigs for a total of 4.

Is it possible HP put a chip with more dedicated ram in this laptop or does something else account for these readings?

[Huffer]

The whole issue is kind of complex but I will boil it down as simply as possible. You need to stop thinking of video power in a computer as synonymous with available video memory. That is only a small, very small part of the equation. In 1999 or 2000 that was all you needed to know. A 16 meg video card was better than an 8 meg video card, period. Things have come a long way since then.

Your 1 gig video card rocks socks not solely because it has 1 gig video memory, but because it has its own graphics processor (gpu) with a clock speed way faster than integrated graphics processors and its own separate memory on the video card. That is dedicated video. Integrated video is another whole story. Integrated video processes the video picture (pixels) in the computer processor and shares system memory. It can share two kinds of system memory. It can permanently grab system memory and hold it for video use. That is the 128 meg number you see. That memory will be deducted from the amount available to Windows. In recent years integrated video has also been using something they call Turbo Cache or something else that sounds equally cool. That feature theroretically can temporarily grab tons of additional Windows memory on the fly as needed. That is the really silly big number you see for "available video memory" in dxdiag.

Here is the problem. Think of a video card as a pump. The video memory is the holding tank. The pump pushes pixels through the system and you need some kind of holding tank to hold pixels and make sure there is a smooth flow of pixels to the screen. The faster the pump the bigger the tank (memory) you need and can use. With a very fast pump you might be able to use a 1 gigabyte tank and keep it filled. On a slower pump like say a Radeon HD 4200 a 128 meg holding tank is almost always enough. Only very rarely would the system actually need to take any additional storage in the Turbo Cache. Actual studies have shown that most of the Turbo Cache cards almost never actually use the Turbo Cache. In other words, the whole idea is kind of silly and largely a marketing ploy. I write a post like this about 2 or 3 times a year in a vain effort to let consumers know they are being subtly misled, but not outright lied to. In theory the video card CAN use 1.5 gigs or something similar to that in video memory but that is totally irrelevant because the actual graphics engine is slow and can't make use of it. So laptop makers sell unsuspecting buyers a system that is good for business applications, video and light gaming and subtly suggest they are getting a gaming system. Consumer still think the video memory number is the only thing they need to know, and they are disappointed when they get the laptop home and play with it. "It says it has a gig of video memory, why won't it game like my desktop"?

To answer your other question, the current generation of integrated video solutions do not allow the user to adjust anything, unlike the days when you could set the amount of memory used by the video in the BIOS. They set it and you can forget it.

I hope this helps a bit even though it is not the answer you want. Nobody has ever given me kudo points for this answer, by the way.    

[Thunderwolf1989]

Just curious, what graphics chip do you have in your desktop?

A simple way to 'decompose' graphic chip type and power is split the first nr with the rest: HD4200 becomes HD4 (series) with 200 'power'. Because of this HD3 (slightly older technology) 850 (whole lot of bulk power) is always better as it has way more power to cover for the slight technological disadvantage. 

nVidia had sort of the same numbering up to the 9 series, but nowadays, those cards are just plain confusing (210 is the same as 310 etc...)

[HaggisCat]

@ Huffer

 So from what I understand from your explanation it's more important that the graphics card can process a given amount of information at a fast speed rather than how much it can deal with.  So it would be better for a bunch of cheetahs to carry smaller amounts of information across a desert at a faster speed then one a slow elephant to do it all in one trip.

A slower speed in a graphics card would cause a game to lag and become choppy ?

 Below are some of  the specs. for the GeForce 230M NVIDIA

Core Speed *	500 MHz
Shader Speed *	1100 MHz
Memory Speed *	800 MHz
Memory Bus Width	128 Bit
Memory Type	GDDR2, GDDR3

 The problem with those specs is that I have no reference to compare them to.

 This is where I got the spec's from.

 http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-230M.17646.0.html

 I could be way off on my comparison or I may be on the right track. I am going to keep plugging away on this so at least I have some understanding of it. Right now I find the easiest thing to do is to look at the system requirements on the side of the gaming box.

 I also found that the biggest problem is the inability for the HP laptops to get rid of the heat generated by the cpu and gpu when a game is played eg. Crysis.

 Here is a laptop that seems up to the task. It has three fans, two of which are allocated specifically for the processor and video chip.

 http://www.pro-star.com/index.cfm?mainpage=productdetail&model=X8100&subpage=gallery#gotop

[Huffer]

I think the pump is a better analogy than thinking about carrying discrete loads one at a time since the video pixels are a constant stream. In the early days the video memory would determine whether you could run 16 or 24 bit color depth. It takes about 1 meg of video memory to drive a 1024 x 768 display at 16 bit depth and maybe 2 to go to 24 or 32 bit depth so that is a mimimum. The video memory has to be able to hold the static number of pixels to paint the screen in a static mode at the chosen color depth. Now you think about the screen refreshing and the pixels changing rapidly as fast action is shown on the screen and you can see how a lot of video memory can help. But unless the pump is fast enough to actually stream a lot of changes in what is shown on the screen very fast, you just never fill up a lof of video memory. I believe the analogy holds well.

2006 but still true

[HaggisCat]

Thanks for taking the time to reply and adding the attachment.

 Much Appreciated !