after i got my notebook back my gpu memory increased

Hello.
So some days ago I got my vostro 1500 back from dell repairing service because it had some issues and now windows shows me that it has 512mb gpu and not 256mb as it showed me before i send my vostro to dell repair station.
It has 256mb normal memory and 256mb shared memory...thats strange because i am sure that before i sent my notebook to dell it showed me always 256mb.
Could it be possible that they changed my video card when they repaired the notebook...
Or is it because i installed the new forceware driver???

 

I'm guessing it's the driver.

 

Lucky You!!

DELL change your faulty VGA card? Try Rivatuner to monitor memory size

 

does the 512 mb version of the 8600gt have 256mb normal and 256 shared memory either?
and i dont think my videocard was faulty, the problem was that vista sometimes didnt boot...

 

Try another driver.I guess it's driver problem

 

i have the latest driver.. the one with 71 at the end...but the driver works fine...i can play bioshock on high with only 1,6 duo cpu and 1gb ram

uhh..rivatuner shows me that i have ddr3 memory, but only 256mb gpu memory...that confuses me. (before that i had ddr2 memory)

here thats the report:
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Northbridge information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0400000000 Description : unknown
$0400000001 Vendor ID : 8086 (Intel)
$0400000002 Device ID : 2a00
$0400000003 AGP bus : not supported
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff Display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0000000000 Description : NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
$0000000001 Vendor ID : 10de (NVIDIA)
$0000000002 Device ID : 0407
$0000000003 Location : bus 1, device 0, function 0
$0000000004 Bus type : PCIE
$000000000f PCIE link width : 16x supported, 16x selected
$0000000009 Base address 0 : fd000000 (memory range)
$000000000a Base address 1 : e0000000 (memory range)
$000000000b Base address 2 : none
$000000000c Base address 3 : fa000000 (memory range)
$000000000d Base address 4 : none
$000000000e Base address 5 : 0000df00 (I/O range)
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$ffffffffff NVIDIA specific display adapter information
$ffffffffff ----------------------------------------------------------------
$0100000000 Graphics core : G84 revision A2 (32sp)
$0100000001 Hardwired ID : 0407 (ROM strapped to 0407)
$0100000002 Memory bus : 128-bit
$0100000003 Memory type : DDR3 (RAM configuration 00)
$0100000004 Memory amount : 262144KB
$0100000100 Core clock domain 0 : 182.250MHz
$0100000101 Core clock domain 1 : 364.500MHz
$0100000006 Memory clock : 799.200MHz (1598.400MHz effective)
$0100000007 Reference clock : 27.000MHz

 

It's DDR2, you won't see a difference anyway

 

so do u think they updated my videocard or not?

yeah and this systemlab website where you can check your hardware for game requirements, it shows me that i have 512mb of memory ram too...before i sent my laptop to dell it showed that i have 245mb memoryram

I really hope its not a driver issue!!!

 

How much RAM did you have before and after the repair? My old laptop used to share system RAM with the video card, and the card would use more memory if more than 1GB was available.

 

they changed the ram and the system board, this said the sheet i got back from them...but they didnt change the amount of ram . so it was 1gb ram and now it is 1gb ram too

 

Nothing has changed. Your card is still using the same old 256MB of DDR2 + 256MB of your system RAM (turbocache) = 512MB. That's all there is to it, nothing more.

 

what a pitty For a moment i thought they changed my video card!!!