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    Shared vid memory = higher memory usage?>

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by s4iscool, Sep 12, 2006.

  1. s4iscool

    s4iscool Notebook Deity

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    I coming from a latitude d820 with a dedicated 128mb ati card to a m1210 with the dedicated/shared nvidia card. I notice that when Im barely running any applications, my memory usage is in the 350mb range (i have 1gb ram)

    Is this because I have 60 processes running, even when the computer isnt running any true applications, or is it something to expect when you have a shared memory vid card? I dont ever recall my d820 using this much memory even with as many processes.
     
    s4iscool, Sep 12, 2006
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  2. derelict1987

    derelict1987 Notebook Consultant

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    I am running with 400mb of memory use at idle and I just did a clean install on my e1705/9400. XP and background processes take up space, that just the way it goes. If it is bugging you that much you could get rid of a lot of those processes and/or reformat... And no, the Video card only shares when you are running 3D apps or something else GPU intensive. Borrows on a need basis.
     
    derelict1987, Sep 12, 2006
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  3. s4iscool

    s4iscool Notebook Deity

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    ok gotcha, just needed to confirm that 350 area idle is not an indication of something wrong.
     
    s4iscool, Sep 12, 2006
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  4. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    Every driver, every little program in your tray, all of those take up memory. Newer versions of those utilities often take up more memory. HP's utilities are the worst offenders. But it's not uncommon. If you use the utility, leave it running. If you don't, disable it. That's the best advice anyone can give to optimize RAM usage versus usability.
     
    Pitabred, Sep 12, 2006
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  5. chimpanzee

    chimpanzee Notebook Virtuoso

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    No need to worry about memory when it hasn't even hit your physical size, they are there using energy anyway. Starts worry when you begin to see lots of swap.

    I disable tasks that like to visit HD periodically(like the famous search and indexing) though, to lower power usage.

    yes, shared memory graphic card use up your memory, try to see if it can be lowered in BIOS though 128M out of 1G is IMO a fair size. I lowered my xpress 1250 to 128M which by default would take 256M which is a bit much as I don't run games.

    But what you see(350M) does not include this. What you see is a lower physical memory size reported by Vista(so instead of 1G, you see around 900M in the system info page).
     
    chimpanzee, Jun 7, 2007
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