Hypermemory on PCI Express X700??

I've got an Acer Aspire 5021WLMI that i've reciently upgraded with 1 GB 333mhz kingston ram. What Does the x700 128mb card have hypermemory support?? cus i read on ati's site that the motherboard x200 or something like that had hypermemory support

and one more thing x700 vs. x1400...and why??

 

The latest ATI driver enables HyperMemory by default.

The X1400 is not as powerful as the X700, it benches about 2000 in 3DMark05 whereas the X700 does 2500+.

HyperMemory really does not make any difference performance-wise, but some games that use a lot of video memory [Quake 4, Doom, 3, BF2] might be a bit smoother, because with HyperMemory, the main memory of your computer is used to store extra textures that cannot fit in the video card's memory, instead of being cached to the hard drive. It takes a lot longer to access the hard drive than it does the RAM.

 

Hi Chaz,

Do you know how can I check if a game seeks more memory and hypermemory kicks in? Is it similar to the old BIOS setting when you could set how much a graphic card could allocate memory?

Cheers,

 

Only certain laptops [chiefly HP/Compaq's] have a setting where you can tell the video card [X200M] to take a chunk of memory for itself.

In ATI Tray, there is a setting that lets you see how much video memory you have free - if it goes to zero, HyperMemory will kick in. To enable it - right-click ATI Tray, Tools and Options, On Screen Display, FlashOSD, then under "Select Active Fields", you will see "2-line" - you can check the first two options to see how much video memory you have left - you'll see it in-game.

Ivan, do you know what ATT shared memory is? You may have to enable that for HyperMemory. You won't see how much it is taking though.

 

Thanks Chaz,

I will get back to this later. I can't check it right now, cause I'm on my integrated GMA900 (working), so I need to reboot and swich back to my x700. Seems that my GMA900 took 128MB for itself.

Cheers,

 

How greedy! And it didn't even ask politely . . .bah.

 

Like I need it for some 3D fullscreen game full of textures!!! **** (Darn) unpolite card. . I guess my 2GB are welcome here.

 

ATI Tray Tools has a lot of Options, is there a guide that say's what the options do??

one more thing....when i go to hardware-system information it says that the GPU is using DDR3 memory but when i right click on the desktop and go to options,,,you know where you have the ati options...under alternative it says that i only have DDR1 ?? what's the big deal??

when i hold my mouse over the ATI tray Tool it says clocks 358:331...and i haven't overclocked anything. Haven't touched anything on the overclock thingy in hardware section...and the funny thing...under hardware-overclocking settings you can choose to press set default settings clocks...and if i press that button then my memory speed goes to 297???

under overclocking settings..under values it says that the bios settings are 358 for GPU and 300 for mem....something is very strange :S

 

If you have PowerPlay enabled, the GPU will automatically downclock itself to save power, so that is probably why you would have lower clocks there when you hit default . .

ATT is normally wrong with the memory type - most Mobility X700's have DDR1 according to what I have seen. There are none with GDDR3.

Your clocks of 358:331 are normal.

 

is 1.25 gb enough for age of empires 3?? does it help to overclock the graphics card a little bit before starting up a game...what i'm trying to say is...does the game play smoother if the GPU is overclocked??

what are your default clocks??

 

Battlefield 2 is just about the only game that will have a noticeable performance gain from over a gig of RAM. AOE 3 should run fine.

 

My defaults are 351:331. Yes, the game does play smoother overclocked [to an extent, some games you may not notice a difference], but overclocking does carry its risks. If you are interested in overclocking, search this forum for a thread called "ATI Overclocking", that will help you out a lot.

1.25GB should be fine for AOEIII.

 

I spoke with the guy who writes ATT(he's on driverheaven.net). I mentioned the same issues with my mobility x700. He said that ATT doesn't always identify the mobile chips and memory correctly. I don't think he has any plans to fix it, as it's mostly cosmetic.

 

I use mine at 358/345 as default and before starting a game I always load my tweaked memory settings(gives me a healthy 7fps boost in CS:S).

 

Good going Caze - still playing with timings?

Cheers,

 

OK, here is how you can use ATI Tray tools to see how much video memory and texture memory you have free:
1. Right Click ATI Tray > Tools & Options > General Options
2. Check the box that says "Enable ATT Shared Memory"
3. Now, in Tools & Options, go into "OnScreen Display"
4. Click the "FlashOSD" tab
5. At the top, there is a check box that says "Hide". Uncheck that if it is checked.
6. Under the bar "Select Active Fields", under "Line 2", check "Free Video Memory" and "Free Texture Memory". Not sure what the other ones do, haven't tested them yet.

Let me know how it goes.

Cheers

 

Hi Chaz,

Great info. I forgot to check other ATT options. ATT definetly helps a lot.

So:

FEAR Performance, test settings: textures medium, all othe on max. Res is 800x600.

FVM: from 60 to 28 in the end.
FTM: 550 MB
SMU: 260 MB (system memory taken by the process)

I will test it more later.

Cheers,

 

e cao stari, sta se desava u zabrebu?? imali neka sansa da poznas Filipa Troskot???

Cheerz

 

Edit: bez kvacica, osim ććććć Haha

Bok AngryTino,

Nista posebno. Hladno je. Nazalost ne znam Filipa. Odakle si ti?

A sto se tice ovoga s hipermemorijom, to me bas sad zanima kako radi. Na Ati stranicama su je nahvalili do neba, a cujem od ljudi da bas i nije nesto.

Vidjet ćemo.

 

I tested a bit more:

Check this:

I turned on Maximum textures:
FVM: 0MB
FTM: 460MB
SMU: 350MB

In the beggining while onboard memory still loads i get 3MB, then there is a glitch for a half of a second and then suddenly FTM falls down by 100+ MB! SO I guess that is the time when the Hypermemory kicks in.
More interesting: my results in FPS are still the same. If there is some kind of the drop, I don't see it! That means that Hypermemory actually works well (at least in FEAR).

Chaz, you have 256 MB card. Try Test Settings with medium and then with maximum textures, leave the rest the same. Check if your FVM drops down 100MB or so.

There is also a drop in process MEM allocation. Also by 100. I guess the whole game is inside the same process (all that means textures too) that dynamically alocates hypermemory when is needed!

I must say I am greatly surprised by the hypermemory performance. It actually doesn't seem to affect the gameplay too much. That is understandable because it only has to do with the size of the textures. Resolutions just change the number of the calculations within the GPU with the SAME texture size. So you can set any resolution. It allocates the same amount of hypermemory.


Cheers,

 

can somebody please tell me why i only get 4-24 fps when i play Age of empires 3?? i haven't overclocked the card, it runs at 358:331. when i play i play at all the highest effects...water reflection and so on. i use 1280x800 which is my max screen size...and i use 16bit colors and not 32....shouldn't i get better results then this??

plz help

 

As far as I know Ati handles 32 and 16bit colour at the same speed. Did you check it?

Cheers,

 

16-bit color makes games look pretty bad . . .bump it up to 32-bit. If you are having trouble with performance, turn off some of the more advanced settings, including any AA/AF you have enabled, in addition to the light bloom. Light bloom causes a noticable drop in framerate.

Hey Ivan, I'll test FEAR and also Quake 4 as soon as I get home from work.

 

i have noticed something....when i look at the information in Acer eManager in slot1=256mb and slot2=1024mb....can that be the problem...should i mabye switch the ram and have 1024 in slot1 and 256 in slot2??

i have disabeled...aa/af...never had that on, and i have disabeled light bloom, never had that either...still slow

 

I wouldn't bet on it.

 

Yeah, it's not that. Your memory is fine . . .

How about turning the texture down some? Just experiment around with settings - I would suggest putting them on the lowest and then gradually bumping them up. Keep the AA/AF off as I previously noted. Increasing the resolution will result in the largest drops in performance.

Let us know how you make out.

 

i have read that alot of users, including you...play AOE 3 with highest settings on your x700 why can't i do the same?? could it be that i have an 1600 ghz ML-28 ??? do i need a faster CPU??

i bought the memory so that i could increase the performance, but there's no difference now in AOE3 when i have 1.25gb, and before i only had 512mb

 

Your CPU isn't the problem, and neither is the RAM. .

I would try updating your video drivers. The latest Mobility Catalyst are 6.1. Remember that you need the Mobility Catalyst and not the Catalyst.

 

i have the newest Omega 6.1 drivers

 

Hi Chaz,
I have borrowed Quake4 and tested it with ATT OSD. I think it shows the wrong readings.
HIGH
FVM:128MB - that seems wrong
FTM:630MB ???
SMU:205MB

ULTRA
FVM:128MB - that seems wrong again!
FTM:630MB how?
SMU:520MB - this is interesting.

So how that can be? Why is so much allocated and then reported as free? Strange. And onboard MEM is completely free. I guess ATT has some problems with it. Oh I will figure it out sooner or later.

Cheers,

 

Alright, I finally have the results.

The level I tested is Mission Interval 04, Infiltration

This is with max. textures.

I have everything at maximum settings, [excluding Soft Shadows] trilinear filtering. Resolution SVGA.

At the beginning of the level - just in the first part, here are the stats:

FMV: 120MB
FTM: 589
SMU: 716

At the end of the first check point [and the second too, very similar], here is what it stated:

FMV: 25MB
FTM: 502
SMU: 713

Below are the results with medium textures [beginning of level]:

FMV:190MB
FTM:659
SMU:509

[end of checkpoint]

FMV: 144MB
FTM: 613
SMU: 506

Apparantly, the SMU does not change throughout, but the video memory really does. With the maximum textures enabled, I have just 25-30MB left at the end, but that is only at the end, not during any other part. The amount of video memory left gradually goes down throughout [between checkpoints], I have 70MB+ free most of the level. After a check point is automatically saved, everything seems to "reset", and I have pretty much all my video memory left. The initial amount goes down quickly to about 100-115MB left for a while, then continues downward. I can see it decrease by 8-10MB each new section or room I go into.
By the end of the checkpoint, it is understandable that I only have a very little amount of video memory left, as it has stored up everything from throughout the checkpoint.

For someone with a 128MB card, it is definitely advisable to use medium textures, as you should have not used all of it. If HyperMemory helps, then put the textures on maximum by all means, it looks great.

I think HyperMemory works nicely because not all the textures are needed at the same time. A 128MB card should not have much of a problem like that. However, if you encounter a really detailed scene, you might notice decreased performance or jerkiness because it has to cache in and out the textures.

Hey Ivan, at the beginning of the level, I did not notice my FTM go down drastically . . it went from 712MB to 659, not that much, I think that is expected.

Hope that helps!

EDIT: I just saw your other post about Quake 4, I'll investigate that. Definitely is wrong.

 

Yeah. I thought so. It is like with main RAM. If there is free RAM it will fill it. If it is not, it will use more, and unload some that are not needed. The thing is with hypermemory that it works on a very fast TWO WAY bus. And the card actually doesn't need to load textures into its own dedicated memory onboard, but instead it just uses them directly from the main memory. Now questions are:
How does it know what to put into dedicated and what into the main "hyper"memory?
Answer is in ATI specs - some advanced algorythms are used to optimize the traffic. So in my case - in FEAR I think it fills up its own 128MB, then allocates next 500 or so and then it works with it. While it works, some are transfered to the faster dedicated ram, and some are left in the hypermemory. After a while it is optimized, until some new texture is not needed.

Chaz, can you test the "Test settings" in Performance options?
You know that small flythrough demo? Just to compare the same conditions?

Cheers,

 

Hm. Chaz are you sure that x700 uses Hypermemory? On ati pages ist says 200M, 300, 600. No 700? Maybe I see just a very fast PCI-Express bus at work here?

 

Well, those are the only cards that are sold with a HyperMemory tag, but in actuality, anybody with a PCI-express ATI video card with 128MB or less of video memory gets HyperMemory enabled by default if they have the Catalyst 5.7 driver suite.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2498
They don't technically call it "HyperMemory", but it's the same thing.

I'll try those test settings.

 

is that with 5.7 and higher or just 5.7?

 

5.7 inludes the HyperMemory support, as well as anything above it.

 

My gateway 8510GX doesn't support it. My 64MB x700 does read incorrectly in 3dmark05 as being 128MB, but other memory identifiers are wrong also in that application. Nothing else reads more than 64MB of memory. So I don't think all of them necessarily support it. I've actually seen very few mobility x700's that do support it. There were a few threads on another board a while back by people saying it didn't work.

I've used Catalyst 5.9 and 5.11. I'm currently using the 5.11 based Omegas.

 

No, you're incorrect.

Was your laptop sold, saying that the video card had HyperMemory?

With the Catalyst 5.7 and over, HM is enabled on all ATI PCI-express video cards with 128MB of memory or less by default.

You won't see the card being reported with the extra memory. It will only borrow memory when needed, unlike some HM cards that can have their settings changed in the BIOS.

Your card supports it with the latest drivers.

 

There is no mention of HyperMemory anywhere on the materials or support information for my laptop. I haven't found any methods that reveal HyperMemory to be enabled.

 

Well, if you install the latest drivers [latest are Catalyst Mobility 6.1], then you'll have it enabled.

But anyways, this article explains it:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2498

Cheers

 

Hey Chaz - this article is great.

I am really happy that I read this. I also noticed FarCry performance on 1280x800 and all on highest, but I thought it was because of RAM. Now it is in a way - hypermemory uses my RAM!

Now to get back to the Quake 4 - it is an OpenGL game, so perhaps that is why the ATT readings are so wrong. I noticed that overall process size in Task Manager is around 700MB on ultra. On high is around 250. Now this is very hard to estimate.
I can run it on ultra settings at 800x600 @ 20-70 FPS with 410/430 clock. I can even play Windows media player music (some classic Queen ) in the background without a single glitch! I assure you that is a completely different experience. But I would recommend it for the second time single player gaming.
But I don't see the big difference between the high and ultra settings. Except for the bigger memory allocation. And high settings are much faster.

Cheers,

 

I agree - I've played through the game a bunch of times, and it is much better to use the High settings vs. the Ultra. The Ultra settings can potentially use up to 512MB of video memory. Basically the same as Doom 3 - High settings are much more efficent.

I guess that HM is not so bad after all. Not a new idea, but still useful.

 

Hi guys,

Chaz, I think this is a nice graphical representation of the FEAR Test settings demo memory allocation:



I also have written the whole article about Ati tray tools automatic profile management (you gave me the idea), OSD (thanks to you! ) and graphs. There is also the link on this thread about hypermemory and stuff. I hope you will find it interesting reading.

Cheers,

 

Nice article Ivan.

That's exactly what I did when I first installed ATI Tray - make a bunch of different profiles. I have a default, plus two underclocked, and three overclocked ones.

Thanks for showing how to use those monitoring graphs - very useful. Definitely going to use that for gaming.

Cheers

 

Hey Chaz and Ivan,

I play a game named America's Army...I have run the same test, but I never run out of memory. So does this mean that hypermemory isnt effective on this game?

Thank you very much,

Hitman

---------------

Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M1437G
1.73 GHz Sonoma, 15.4" WXGA Cyrstalview, 1 GB DDR2 400 Mhz, 80 GB Sata 8 mb 5400 rpm, X700 mobility (351/297 stock), MX510 mouse, Silvercrest headset, Pacific breeze notebook cooler :centrino: :fujitsu:

 

If the ATI Tray still indicates that you have video memory left, then you aren't using it all - the game doesn't need to.

HyperMemory will come into effect after you run out of Video memory.

 

Yes AA is quite old game. But in quake4 there is 128 MB free out of 128MB, so I think ATT is lying! And Quake4 is an OpenGL game!

Cheers,

 

Sorry, been away for a while so I didn't see your post until now.

I haven't been playing around more with the timings as those I found earlier have been the fastest possible for my current clocks. I can't even overclock the memory to 350 with these timings without a crash.

 

Hi Caze,

I'm also happy with mine. I don't touch them anymore. I get quite well performance and stability.

Cheers,