how to share memory from ram to video card?

[einnar82]

what are the procedures on ohow to share memory from ram to video card? and isn't possible to do it?

[2x3i5x]

Depends. If it's an onboard video card (one built into the motherboard) chances are it already does. Go through the BIOS at startup and allocate more or less shared memory as desired.

Otherwise, if you have a graphics card with dedicated memory, then you can't share memory from the ram sticks to the video card 'cuz although the ram sticks and video card both have "memory" but they're not the same thing (i.e., not compatible).

[geek hoodlum]

Depends. If it's an onboard video card (one built into the motherboard) chances are it already does. Go through the BIOS at startup and allocate more or less shared memory as desired.

Hmmm... Is there a limit on doing the allocation? Example if I have 5GB of RAM, can I allocate a 2GB from my RAM into the onboard video card?

[DaveLembke]

Yes the onboard GPU is limited by the BIOS maximum memory address range. The max you can set in BIOS is the Max you can get. It will likely max out at 256 or 512MB of that Ram or less than 256MB if a lower end or older system.

[hot dog]

If your bios supports DVMT (dynamic video memory technolgoy)  mode, it may allocate a little bit extra video ram for your video apps,  IF you are not using a video card...However, I think there is a minimum RAM requirement before DVMT would do you any good..

[BC_Programmer]

Either way.... an on-board card often gives sub-par performance. Although the on-board offerings of ATI and NVidia are often pretty good.

[2x3i5x]

there is the thing from nvidia where if you have a low end graphics card like 8400GT, you could boost it with the onboard video card for enhanced performance (forgot the name, but it's sort of like the NVidia's SLI but with low end graphics)