New Laptop

[adventk]

Hey guys I just recently purchased this at Best Buy because I had a 150 Dollar Gift card.

Toshiba - Satellite Laptop with AMD Turion™ X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor RM-70 - Blue - U405D-S2852

I was wandering what would you guys rate this for an average gamer? I'm only interested in World of Warcraft and Starcraft II coming out and I'm worried that my video card is very weak. It says on there that the video memory is dynamically allocated and was wandering what that meant?

 

[Toroid]

It says on there that the video memory is dynamically allocated and was wandering what that meant?

It means that the integrated graphics chipset (Radeon 3100) will dynamically use part of the main system RAM (3GB in this case) for it's graphics operations. According to your link, 256 MB to 1407 MB may be 'leeched' from the system RAM as the video chipset deems necessary; this will decrease the system RAM available for other applications. I believe you can set the maximum limit in the BIOS.

If you want to game comfortably on the laptop, I'd suggest going in for a discrete video chipset with dedicated memory. Integrated graphics are not the best for gaming.

Sorry, but I don't know much about AMD mobile processors; been a intel user all the time when it comes to notebooks.

The rest of the specs look okay although it seems to be missing Bluetooth.

 

[adventk]

So does this mean I can force more memory into my video chipset or it has to be done "dynamically"? The reason being is because when I game, I just game. Other applications running in the background won't matter to me.

 

[KSoD]

The only way to give the Video more RAM would be thru the BIOS. In there you should see the option to give more RAM to the GFX processor. If that option isnt available then you can only have it use what is already dedicated to it.

 

[adventk]

Ah I see, the bios currently on my computer is default Toshiba and won't let me change anything . So I'm just stick with whatever it is dedicated to right?

 

[Toroid]

The only way to give the Video more RAM would be thru the BIOS. In there you should see the option to give more RAM to the GFX processor. If that option isnt available then you can only have it use what is already dedicated to it.

Quick Q: for eg., if you set the max video RAM in the BIOS as 512MB, does that mean that the video chipset will
(1) use the full 512MB all the time or
(2) use up to 512MB 'dynamically' according to it's requirements i.e. may not use the full 512MB continuously.

I think my understanding of how integrated video works is flawed. I always thought it was (2)

 

[KSoD]

No Toroid you are right. It will use up to 512MB. But the way it works is the 512MB is already taken from your system. It is always put aside. It can never by used by your system even though your video may only be using 128MB at the time. The rest just sits there idle.

At least this is from what i know of onboard video.

Adventk,

Yes if you cant change the options you are stuck with what they set for you.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I'm pretty sure you can change the ammount of video memory using catalyst control center.

 

[Spit-wad]

You're gonna hurt your eyes playing games on a 13"!

 

[KSoD]

I'm pretty sure you can change the ammount of video memory using catalyst control center.

That may be true. I have not seen nor used the ATi Control Center in a long time. So you could be right on that.