questions about VGA cards

[Rawan AbuSalman]

hi,

what is the difference between a built in graphics card (intel or something) and an external one???

and what is the story about "shared" memory?
(((Some graphic cards say "up to" 128mb....i guess thats shared; they take from your RAM??? are there vga's that have their own RAM?)))

thanx...

 

[Nitestick]

sometimes integrated graphics adapters have there own dedicated ram but its rare. so having integrated graphics takes some of your ram and it also takes more cpu cycles to operate the video controller. graphics cards are far more powerful and have their own dedicated memory but can use the computers memory if there is no more memory available on the card.

 

[Rawan AbuSalman]

so basically, all (or most) built in cards use the memory of the RAM and most external cards use their own memory??

When they say "up to" 128 mb, what does that mean? does it mean that the card has its own memory??

when the memory is "shared", does it mean it takes from RAM??
How do you know if the card has its own memory or not? (what do they say in the specs or description)

(on my laptop, I have 512mb of ram and 64 mb vga...but when i open system properties, it sais 496mb of ram only...someone told me that the graphics is using the rest...but how is that? (512-496 is only 16...)

 

[Rawan AbuSalman]

edit

on the description of the board, they say it has onboard vga...

(Intel® GMA900 onboard graphics subsystem)

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma900/index.htm


Does that mean that it has built in vga...ie, uses computer ram?? how much is the vga?? (128 mb or what) or does it use all it needs (if RAM is available; if it need 256 and there is 1gb ram it uses it??_

In this case, if the board has a built in vga..can i also add an external card??? does the total vga memory add up or do i end up using only the external card or what??

thanx
does that mean

 

[Rawan AbuSalman]

can use the computers memory if there is no more memory available on the card.

so technically, they can use as much memory available?? If you have a 128 mb and you have 1024mb of ram, and you end up using all the ram of the card, what happens next? does the card use as much memory from you ram as it needs (since you have enough, (1 gb of ram...)?

 

[horndude]

depends on the aperture setting in the BIOS, even video cards with their own memory can at certain times make use of system memory as well

memory used=resolution x color depth x number of frames rendered + special effects

 

[RicoDirenzo]

An onboard accelerated graphic adapter that is base 64mb of video memory will not out run system RAM on most applications and use sytem ram as virtual graphics memory. If you are running graphics memory intensive applications, it may try to grab some system RAM. However, there will be lag as system RAM is far "slower" that Video RAM. The video apperture setting in your Bios should be default at 64mb. Most new games like BF2, Q4 etc. will not run. As long as you are not using the laptop for gaming you shouldn't worry about it.