Video Memory question

On another notebook forum, some members are telling me that using the feature to add another 128 mb memory to the existing dedicated 128 hurts performnance???

I keep asking this question below and NOT getting any response to it. I think it is a logical question:

Okay, would someone care to explain WHY this is happening??? Why have that option if it doesn't help? What would be it's purpose???
Common Sense says that performance should improve when you add 128 to make it 256, not drop!!!

Is it possible that you guys are using your current memory you have when you do that?

How about like I did, I just added 1GB of memory and THEN added the 128 to make it 256 in video memory.

 

because the dedicated memory is much much faster than the shared one and if you share 128mb of memory this will hurt applications which depend greatly on the speed of the of transfer of data.
GPUs are not affected so much by the amount of RAM available but by the speed of the chip/card. So 64mb X700 will be a universe ahead of 256mb X200 in terms of performance.

 

Yeah and the fact that in order to access the shared memory, the graphics card has to go thorough the CPU - in case of AMD due to the on board memory controller and in the case of Intel through the Northbridge. This is one of the reasons most people see a dip in performance as the graphics card has to wait while it tries to access the RAM. Without Hypermemory, the graphics card utilizes the dedicated memory without having to wait on the shared memory.

 

So I should remove the 128 sharing and go back to just the 128 dedicated memory?

 

Do you know how fast the memory is on the X200 128MB? From what I understand, it's bound to the clock of the GPU. I don't think the Shared memory in the case of the X200 integrated chips set is faster than the main memory.

However, I believe the difference in peformance would have to be realted to

1: The Video Memory shares the main memory bandwidth with the CPU. This means access to the main memory has to be slowed because there's more traffic requests from both the CPU and GPU.
2: Reduction of main memory available.

I think #1 is the main culprit.

I still would like to know exactly how fast the sideboard memory runs.

Regards,

Mike

 

I wonder what the HP Tech were thinking when they offered this option if it actually slows down the computer? Just a gimic to help sell the notebook?

How do I find out the speed of the video card and/or sideboard? System Info maybe? What/where do I look?

Now, brings up this question, maybe I should go back to 1024MB (two 512's) down from 1.5GB and use that returned memory money to get a second battery?

 

I don't know how you'd determine the speed of the memory itself. I don't know if a utility exists to do this. Usually someone has taken one of these bad boys apart to see the inards.

More memory is always better, you'd have to weight whether the memory or battery is more important.

The 256 MB of ram isn't exactly a gimic. There are instances in which having more video memory can be an advantage over faster smaller memory such as playing games at higher resolutions.

However, because the GPU can't really handle that larger load due to memory bandwidth issues, 64bits only, and lack of RAW GPU power. For the most part the extra 128M is moot.

Mike

 

Okay then, which is better for overall notebook performance?

1. leave the video at 128 dedicated with 128 shared with 1.37 main memory?
2. take the 128 shared out and just run with 1.5GB of main memory?

And explain why you picked 1 or 2.

 

I would pick number 2. For most games 128MB is just fine to perform flawlessly. The problem with the 200m is that it does not have enough graphics power to play games at full settings.

Hypermemory is only useful if the card has little/low amount of ddicated memory(like 32MB) when the extra memory is really used but if you have 128MB dedicated, the usefulness of Hypermemory is minimal.