3D Acceleration

[strategist333]

Is 3D acceleration a default, built-in feature of modern-day graphics cards? (Even integrated graphics?) The specific product I'm referring to is ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M IGP.

Also, how does shared memory compare to dedicated memory (in terms of speed)?

Thanks

 

[str8lazy]

In the graphics cards that I have worked with, I have seen hardware 3d acceleration in all of them, and even on the integrated cards. Though I dont know about ALL of the modern-day cards, I would assume they do, but that is only an assumption.

There is a pretty big difference between shared memory and dedicated. Obviously dedicated is better. Its like a server, its designed to server and only server clients. Then if you start using it for home use, like surfing the web just because or downloading files and playing games, movies editing..... it becomes less efficient at server, because resources are being shared.

I dont know if that is either to simple of an example for you and you feel as if I am treating you like a little kid or that is way beyond you.

Say you have 128MB of RAM in your computer and you need 8 of it for you integrated video card. That automatically slows your system down, because it delays the processing of information. If this happens is takes longer for your computer to figure out what it is doing.

But now you have a Graphics card, there is a GPU on it, which helps with some of the stress on your CPU and then it has it down dedicated memory. Obviously this is better.

You can think of the difference between the two like this:

1. Computer with Integrated Gfx has a 4 lane high, 2 lanes for actual memory use by the CPU and then 2 lanes for the gfx

2. Computer with Ggfx card has TWO FOUR lane highways, 4 lanes for memory usage for the computer, and 4 lanes for the GPU.

I dont know if this helps any, I tried. If I missed something or screwed something up let me know.

 

[onyo]

that helps for me ty

 

[str8lazy]

np

 

[strategist333]

Yeah it helps thanks.. just one thing: when it says "shared", the RAM isn't exactly "shared" is it? It's dedicated to the integrated graphics and can't be used by other applications, correct?

Also, you have any comparative speeds for shared/dedicated? (I've always liked number-based facts)

 

[str8lazy]

Well it is shared from the same chip, but then that memory becomes dedicated to the task at hand i.e. the video rendering. hmm... I dont know about the numerical part of it, their maybe be something on Tomshardware if you look hard enough.

If you dont know that website its http://www.tomshardware.com/

 

[pc_boy]

when you have shared memory, it uses RAM as video memory... and integrated vid. cards suck... i mean, you can play AA, but not any modern games..

 

[desiboi]

I have 8MB Integrated video. It says in the manual that it's fast as an 8MB AGP 4x.

 

[Hacp]

Integrated video basically means that your video card borrows the ram memory from your computer. This wouldn't have a great affect on the performance if your system memory were clocked higher, and your agp/pci-e bus had a huge amount of bandwith, but they don't. So, basically, integrated video is bottlenecked by the pci-e/AGp bus and the speed of the ram. When you compare 400 mhz ddr ramm to 1000 mhz gddr3 ram, it isn't even funny.