Memory available for Radeon 3450

I thought the Radeon 3450 in my Studio 15 had 256MB but when I opened up dxdiag it reported that it had 1528MB avilaible for the video card. Why is this? Is it taking money away from the system memory? I thought the card was dedicated and wouldn't take RAM away from the system?

Cheers, Phil

 

The Radeon 3450 does have 256 mb dedicated ram, The other is called hyper ram. hyper ram is shared system ram.you can right click on the desktop, click personalize, then click display settings, then click on the adapter tab. This will show how much is dedicated and how much is shared. With my system having 4gb I have 1789 hyper memory and 2045 total with the dedicated included. One last note. The hyper memory does not take from the system unless it is needed. This is usually in games and 3d apps

 

Long explanation would be needed, but in the skinny it is using System RAM + Dedicated RAM.

This is a new vista thing so the Video Card can't determine how much it gets or how little it gets.

Edit: Decided I might as well share a link with a more through explanation as I figured you should know. I just didn't want to do the typing

http://blogs.msdn.com/pigscanfly/archive/2006/10/10/Grahiphics-Memory-Reporting-In-Vista.aspx

 

Don't worry.
My memory is 1528 MB under vista too.
With the same Studio.
And I have motherboard (on board Ati Radeon 3450) replaced already.

the same result.
So don't worry, it is pretty normal for Vista.

 

Thanks for the replies guys. I thought it was Vista just being 'greedy' so thanks for the clarification!