Acer Aspire 1694WLMi: Is the Video Dedicated?

I have been looking in New Zealand at an Acer Aspire1694WLMi laptop which has an "integrated" ATI Mobility Radeon X700 128MB chip. Does this chip share with the computer's system memory, or is it a dedicated video chip?

This laptop costs $NZ2500 and has an Intel Pentium M Processor 760 2GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB). It also has an 80GB hard drive, and 512MB RAM expandable to 2GB.

Because this system costs at least $500 more than one that has 64MB shared video, I wondered whether you think it is worth the extra to have a dedicated video / graphics chip?

Is the sharing of memory an important drawback of cheaper laptops, or would this only be noticeable when playing high-end games that need a lot of graphics power? In other words, can you play car racing games etc., watch videos, and do video editing with a laptop that has 64MB video shared?

Do you think the 1694WLMi is able to play high end games and do video editing a lot better than a laptop that has only 64MB shared video and 256MB RAM?

Thanks for your help.

Fred

 

You've done good research, the GPU is indeed dedicated, the "intergrated" part is probrably a bad use of the word, as the GPU is a part of the motherboard, thus "intergrated" but it is 100% dedicated 128mb of Video RAM.

Depending on what you do, you have most of the points on the dot, if you want to play games with a breeze, you must get a dedicated GPU for best performance.

Of course!, the 256mb RAM would be 192mb RAM after taking the 64mb for video!

 

256MB of RAM, incidentally, is really too low nowadays, especially if it's down to 192MB due to shared graphics; 512MB is the minimum for running things such as Windows XP happily.

A laptop with integrated graphics should be okay watching videos, and I think that video editing is largely CPU-based (although lots of RAM is a huge bonus for that), but any games released in the last few years are going to struggle on integrated graphics.

 

Don't forget that the GPU is not always borrowing 64MB of memory - it is dynamically allocated, anywhere from 8MB to 64MB. But, when you are playing games, I imagine that it is borrowing the maximum amount.

256MB is the minimum amount or RAM needed to run Windows XP smoothly - er, without ANYTHING else running - 512MB is highly recommended. I use a gigabyte, works great, and I saw a good performance increase over 512.

 

Thanks very much for these replies, I guess a gigabyte of memory would be far better for video editing etc. I agree Coriolis, the term "integrated" confused me a little and made me think the video may not be dedicated. People are telling me to wait for the new "blue ray" models, but I guess these will be very expensive when they first come out? The other brand in New Zealand which offers good value for money is "ASUS" (such as the ASUS Z92U Turion), but I think Acer has been around longer and may be more reliable?

Regards, Fred

 

I was talking to a computer sales rep today who said that when the video is on the motherboard, this is nowhere as good as having a dedicated card in a dedicated video slot. I am not sure if this is true, can anyone explain this in more detail for me. Thanks very much.

Regards, Fred

 

I think the confusion sits with, the x700 IS on the motherboard BUT has its own Video RAM.

 

Hi, where ever the GPU is located is irelevant, it still uses the PCI express bus to communicate with the rest of the system, that makes it x16, unlike AGP which is x8 max. That computer sales rep doesn't know what he is talking about and confusing desktop motherboards with laptop motherboards. As I think I've said before in reply to your other post, I hope you are the same guy who has posted in other newsgroups, the x700 is about as good as it gets and will be fine for all of the most recent games....
ChrisC

 

Best thing to do to verify 100% if the video is shared or dedicated is top run DXDIAG (Start -> Run -> DXDIAG). If a popup box appears, just click yes or no, doesn't matter.

Under the System Tab, at the bottom, it should say how much memory you have, if it's less than 1GB (if you have 1GB, etc...) than that means you have shared, if it's in that area, you have dedicated.

Now, you can goto the Display Tab and it'll tell you what card and how much video memory you have. This will verify if it's dedicated or not (add the 2 amounts together, if it's over 1024MB, then you 100% have dedicated video memory).

-Vb-

 

It is 'integrated' in that it cannot be changed as stuff is soldered to the motherboard. However, the X700 is a proper graphics chip and is not integrated into the chipset, and it comes with 128MB of its own video memory. On my system, upgraded to 1GB, 1022MB is listed in dixdiag (not sure where the last 2MB went, but it didn't go to the graphics).