Incorrect amount of video ram shown in game config file

I was recently poking through the config file for three racing games; RACE, GTR2 and rFACTOR. The GTR2 is a retail boxed purchase and the other two are only the demos I downloaded to try out. They all use a separate .exe file to configure the game's resolution and AA settings. It runs once after you install the game or can be run from the start menu shortcuts later on as well.

In all the config files for the three games the content is almost verbatim between them. Another common thing I noticed is under the "Video RAM" heading it says 615,616 or 614 depending on which one I look at. Now my notebook is an HP dv9035 with a 256MB GO 7600 card and 2GB of system memory paired with an intel Core 2 Duo T5500. With the games I was experiencing some microstutters in the textures where when viewing the pavement in front of the car at driving speed the textures movement would look like it skipped a frame. In all three games my FPS are in 40-70's with all the details maxed and into the 70-90's at medium or lower settings.

I tried just changing the 616 in the file to a 256 and saving it and it takes it but doesn't really seem to do anything. If I rerun the graphics setup application it resets it to the unusual 616,615 or 614 number. I didn't think the dv9035 had any shared video memory so I am at a loss as to why these games are "thinking" my 7600 has that amount. Even if it had shared memory you'd think it would be a multiple of the dedicated on board memory like 512Mb or something.

I am trying to evaluate how well these games run on this machine before buying them and the stuttering issue is distracting me. Any ideas why the games' would think this much memory is there? Nowhere else on the computer does it get the wrong amount of memory for the nvidia card. Everywhere else it reports it correctly as 256Mb. I used RIVA tuner just to see what it "detected" and it was the plain old 256MB as well.

It is just an odd thing I noticed that I'm trying to figure out if it part of the stuttering problem I'm seeing.

 

Does the hard drive light occasionally light up as you are playing? The computer may still be caching textures from the hard drive, explaining the split-second stutter.

You said you were getting a high amount of frames per second - you may be experiencing image tearing. Try turning on Vsync to see if any of the issues go away.

I do not think that your problem has anything to do with video RAM. If you haven't updated your video drivers, that may be worth a try:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=64910

And if none of those fix anything . . perhaps it is just the game. Have you tried any other games besides racing games?

 

No the Hard Drive is silent the whole time. I thought about the tearing and already tried V-Sync and it didn't really do anything except cap the frame speed. I likely need to update the drivers since the notebook shipped with 86.38 and I know there are newer ones available from the sites listed in your link. I am just hesitant to update them for a demo of a game when the ones I own and play like Half Life 2, CS:Source, Sims2 are working fine. I am always hesitant to mess with drivers even though it is easy to roll them back these days. I still am mentally scared from drivers and direct x updates back in win95 gone bad, lol. I should add the GTR2, the only non demo of the three, seems to not have the issue at all. The rFactor demo only seems to do it with the slow sedan car they give you. When I use the Formula One car everything is smooth as silk. It isn't a huge deal but I am curious as to why the auto-configure apps for them are putting in that number for video RAM. I thought maybe it was just a code or ID to indicate the amount and type of ram rather than an actual amount until I found the sysinfo file in one of the demo folders that in plain english said "video ram 616MB". I was thinking maybe it was just their software didn't know how to read mobile graphics chips and therefore reported back goofy info like notebook hardware control or speedfan used to do with core 2 duos.

 

It's an issue with the game then, I wouldn't dwell over it. Is it affecting how you play the game? If it is a slow car, you should have more time to react.

But, since everything else runs fine, there is nothing wrong with your laptop. I imagine these issues you are having now would be fixed by a patch in the full version.

I don't know why the game reads your video memory like that, but you are probably right in that the game does not know how to identify mobile GPUs. Not really an issue.

 

The amount of video memory a game sees is not the same as the amount of physical ram. There are a lot of complications.
There's always some system memory set aside for communication with the graphics card. (On AGP cards, you had AGP aperture, which was a bios setting. Dunno what it's called with pci-e, but the system sets aside some memory for the gpu there as well)
The driver might decide to reserve more memory still, and tell applications it's available. It might also do the opposite and reserve video memory for other purposes. In short, the number is pretty much useless for most purposes.

If you want to know where the number comes from, the game simply asks Direct3D for the amount of available graphics memory. Direct3D then asks the graphics driver. So it makes no difference whether it's a mobile GPU or not. As long as it has a working driver, it will report the correct number. (Correct as in the amount of memory the driver says is available to applications. Which is not the same as the amount of physical memory on the card)

Most likely, they don't really use the number for anything important in any case. Usually it's either ignored, or it may be used to define default graphical settings.

 

You can see what DirectX is reporting by running the program dxdiag.exe (it's in your Windows folder, or you can just go to Start->Run and type in "dxdiag" in the dialog there.)

 

Direct X is reporting the expected 256MB of video ram.

This is I think, as others have mentioned, just an anomaly of the demo software apparently.

 

Now therer's your problem