Can anyone explain this memory allocation to video card?

Can anyone explain this graphics/system memory allocations? The only thing I can think of is that since I installed 4gb ram, and my computer (Asus F3Jm) only technically supports 2gb (but seems to be utilizing 3gb just fine) it took that extra physical ram that the BIOS isn't recognizing as physically usable and allocating that to graphics card usage. Any thoughts?

-Randy

 

I cant break down everything as dont know 100% all of it but that extra memory is just memory it could share with the system.. You have 512 on the video card and the rest is what it "could" take from windows.

If your system only see's 3GB than thats all you get.. It wont take the extra and give to video... what it sees it what you got. The video will just share that amount shown from what windows can see.

If You have 32-bit vista thats the first problem, you need 64-bit with more than 3GB... 32bit can really only hanld 4GB memory total, and it counts video memory in that also... While this is not 100% always true as some can argue otherwise its a good way to look at it.

So getting 64-bit would help you, and if your on that already than its a bios limit that maybe they will fix for you soon.

The video will show that same shared memory even if/once your windows can see all 4GB...

 

I've never been interested too much in details about NVidia Turbo Cache, but maybe you can start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboCache

Doesn't seem to be a very reliable article, but it's a starting point...

 

All video cards are allowed, when needed, to grab some system ram to store extra graphics information. It used to be more pronounced with AGP in that you had to select things like apature size etc but the same also happens with PCIe cards as well . Its nothing to worry about as the system will not grab the memory unless it is actually needed and with 512MB on-board I doubt it ever will need it unless you are into some stupidly high levels of texturing in games.

nVidia did start to use it with some cards that had very very low graphics memory (in the order of 32 or 64MB) to try and lower costs but it made the card very slow compared to normal cards and the term "turbo memory" is just plain wrong with regards to the speed it allows.

 

Turbocache will only be used if you run out of dedicated memory. Seeing as you have 512mb on a Go7600, I highly doubt you will even fill up half of that on normal games.

 

If memory serves, when they put out TurboCache they basically said it can use up to half of your system memory to supplement the onboard VRAM, BUT will never touches the first 512MB of RAM, as that's what they consider what you need for basic system operations.

So if you have say 2944MB of free RAM (like my V1J with 4GB of RAM but only 2944MB usable), if you take 2944 - 512 and take half of it, you get 1216 MB = usable system RAM (about the 1215 in that picture).

 

Thanks for the responses. These all make perfect sense.

As for Bryanu, I do have Vista Business 64bit installed, so that's not the issue. I guess I just need a BIOS update from Asus...