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Originally Posted by Mr. Kelly
Is that merely due to the large RAM sizes and capacities of 64 bit systems, or does W7 64 process memory in a different way???
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well of course if you have Windows 64 bit with just 3GB's of Ram, than a 1GB card may reduce the amount of Ram for other apps. Im kinda of assuming you will have at least 4GB's of ram if you are using Windows 7 64 bit. Guess i should of made that clear.
Ive been searching for a well explained answer and this is what I've found so far, from the guys at Techguys.org. This is relating to Vista, but as far as I know its the same for Windows 7.
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Let's clarify this once and for all IN VISTA:
When one clicks on Display Properties / Advanced, there are three settings below Total Available Graphics Memory:
System Video Memory: this one is usually 0. When it is NOT, this tells us there's an integrated onboard graphics that comes with little / more likely none of its own ram & is using a portion of system ram for itself.
Dedicated Video Memory: the ram that the graphics adapter already brings with it, PLUS "any system ram it wants to exclusively appropriate for itself"(other subsystems would not be allowed to use it ever).
Shared System Video Memory: the portion of available system ram that the graphics system can borrow IF / WHEN it is available. In other words, this is really first-come, first-served: the shared memory is available to the graphics system & to other non-graphic subsytems... neither can appropriate memory in use by the other.
NOW...the video card is going to tell the system how much system memory it's going to allocate for its use:
IF it does this during POST, thru a call to the BIOS reserving a ram amount, windows will not 'see' the subtracted amount.
IF instead it does this during startup @ driver initialization, windows 'sees' this.
However, the end result is the same no matter what windows reports: dedicated system memory is NOT available to the system...& shared memory may or may not at times.
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