Upgrading video ram in SZ300?

I have discovered, to my dismay, that my 4-day-old SZ330P/B has only 128mb of video ram on its Geforce Go 7400, which apparently is not enough to run my external widescreen 20" monitor in its native resolution, 1680 x 1050, with 32-bit color. (It only will allow 16-bit color.) As I am a graphic artist, it's very hard to do work with any color accuracy in 16-bit color, so I am reduced to working on my 13.3" screen as the primary monitor.

Is this something that I can upgrade myself by purchasing more video ram from somewhere? Is it very hard to do? How expensive is it? Am I going to void some sort of warranty if I do this?

 

I don't think you can upgrade your Video Memory for the G07400.
You can over clock the GPU but becareful so you don't fry it out.

 

I have no idea how to overclock something, and I'm afraid to fry something out. Do you have any recommendations for where to go to learn more about that, or am I best off to make do with the setup as I have it and only do color-control work on the Sony 13" screen?

 

You have 128 megs of video RAM. That should be enough for 32768 x 1024 x 32-bit resolution. I doubt adding more RAM will help.

Some systems let you take memory away from system RAM through a BIOS setting. But again, this is unlikely to help. 1680 x 1050 x 32-bit is only a little under 7 megs.

 

For overclocking your Go 7400, use NVTweak or RivaTuner.

 

You are note going to be able to increase your video RAM. Unless it is disabled by the BIOS (or if you can toggle that option in BIOS), the 7400 might be able to draw another 128MB of video memory from system RAM (Turbocache). However, that should already be toggled on for you. If so, then that's all you'll get.

There is no other way to adjust that RAM.

 

If your not sure don't do it.
I recommend reading and understanding the consequences of overclocking.

If you must, open up your Nvidia program and use the help menu to find what you need.

" Adjust Overclocking Settings
Use this page to override the shipped clock frequencies of your GPU and GPU memory. Increasing the clock speeds will increase your GPU performance but may necessitate the proper cooling mechanism of your graphics to activate in order to maintain the same level of reliability.

Factory shipped clock frequencies (no overclocking): Select this option if you do not want to apply any custom GPU-based clock frequencies.

Automatic overclocking: Select this option to automatically increase or decreases the clock frequency to meet the demand placed on it. When running a demanding 3D game, the clock frequency is increased to its operating threshold. Under less demanding tasks, such as when your Windows desktop is visible, the GPU clock is turned down to reduce power consumption and temperature resulting in reduced fan noise as the fan is running slower.

Use these settings only until I restart my computer: Select this option to apply any of the previous two selection only to your current session. When you turn off or restart your computer, these selections are no longer valid.



Related Topics

Make my graphics card run faster

Change the GPU clock frequencies

Run my GPU fan at its highest speed

Have the GPU operate at it’s fastest speed

Always run my NVIDIA GPU fan at its fastest GPU speed

Automatically determine the fastest GPU speed

Adjust Overclocking Settings (Advanced)".

 

Okay, thanks everyone for your help. Since I am not very technical, I don't think I'm going to be able to change this because I'm not going to mess with overclocking and risk overheating something in the machine. I am going to look in my bios to see if turbocache is enabled, and if it is, then I'll just live with the crappy low quality 16-bit color on my beautiful 20" indisplay, which will be relegated to a secondary monitor for doing just layouts or non-critical work. What a major disappointment.

 

Neither allocated memory or overclocking have anything to do with you not being able to run that monitor.

Updating your vidcard drivers is a first on your list.

Checking out Powerstrip is next.

Are you running through DVI?

 

OH, THANK YOU!! Actually, it was running on "default monitor" instead of using the Viewsonic drivers. When I installed the Viewsonic driver, I am now able to view 32-bit color on my big monitor. HOORAY!!!

Thanks so much, guys! This forum is great!