The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Increasing Video Memory on Gateway MX6956

    Discussion in 'Gateway and eMachines' started by haydenangelo, Jan 23, 2012.

  1. haydenangelo

    haydenangelo Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Heya guys, new forum-er here.
    I bought a Gateway MA7 (that's what the sticker says, the hardware detection says MX6956)
    The video aperture size is only 8mb, but I have 3GB of memory.
    In bios revision 77.12, it shows me the memory sizes for each slot, but there's no options there to increase the video memory size.
    Anybody know a workaround or if I'm stuck with crap for VRAM?
     
    haydenangelo, Jan 23, 2012
    #1
  2. Greg

    Greg Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    7,857
    Messages:
    16,212
    Likes Received:
    58
    Trophy Points:
    466
    Your graphics chipset is the Intel GMA 950, which shares your system's RAM as it does not have its own dedicated VRAM. 8MB is the default that the Windows driver allocates, which is enough to handle almost any 2D (non-gaming) task. If/when the chipset decides it needs more "VRAM" the driver automatically allocates more of your 3GB of RAM. It is completely managed by the driver software for the chipset.

    What are you trying to do with the laptop? For gaming the GMA 950 absolutely sucks, but for most other tasks it is "good enough."
     
    Greg, Jan 23, 2012
    #2
  3. haydenangelo

    haydenangelo Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5

    Well, I'm playing Minecraft on it. And it runs DECENTLY but I can't help but feel like it should run better. It's probably just the age of the laptop. I can't even find the model on Gateways website.
     
    haydenangelo, Jan 26, 2012
    #3