dedicated/shared GC ram

[Shackled Phoenix]

Alright i'm running a laptop that's starting to get a bit dated. i'm about 10-20 FPS short of playable on today's graphics intensive games (IE, half life 2, doom 3)

I run an ATI RADEON IGP 345M (motherboard/GC combo so no upgrading for me) and it runs 32 ded 32 shared of RAM.

what i was wondering was, Can i set it to use more shared RAM? I'm hoping this would gimme the slight boost i need to be able to get these games going playable.

I already figure it's no, but since i've never torn apart laptops with shared RAM i figure wth... i'll ask.

[LardGibs]

What little I could find suggests that if possible, this setting can be found in the BIOS. (at least for Sony VAIO). GL you'll probably need it.


laptops=teh suck unless you lay down $3K

[Shackled Phoenix]

wow. that was easier than i expected it to be. right there in the front page of the bios, lol. now i've got 128 meg's of shared rather than 32.

only problem is... i'm down to 384 meg's of system, this is gonna be hard to test to see if i got the boost i needed without spending money on more system RAM.

[LardGibs]

What I don't understand is really how much benefit you can expect, because presumbably the texture retrieval isn't going to be any faster since it has to go over the main bus. maybe it's just a memory protection thing.

XP should run fine on 384 Mb but consider shelling out for extra memory it's always a good thing. heck take a risk on Ebay.

[Morpheus]

Heh, tell you my little secret, never found any cheaper prices than at www.pricewatch.com, not even on Ebay.

[Shackled Phoenix]

I don't really expect anything, i HOPE for it. like i said, don't need too much...
I hope it'll boost graphical performance, otherwise, what'd be the point of even HAVING shared mem?

oh and yeah, it runs on 384, i knew it would, but i have already seen it cause a slowdown here and there as it winds up resorting to virtual mem. a 256 stick should be enough to get me back on track.

[Karmashock]

Laptops are propriatory and therefore specific to themselves. Give us your make model and current ram.

[Shackled Phoenix]

for....?

[Karmashock]

Alright i'm running a laptop that's starting to get a bit dated.
8)