Will upgrading my RAM affect my graphics?

I own a Sony Vaio VGN N38E with 1GB of RAM. The graphics is an onboard chipset 'Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with Total Available Graphics Memory of 224MB'.

I was wondering, since a couple of my games run slow because of my low graphics capabilities, if i upgraded my RAM to say, 2GB, would this give my graphics chipset more memory and make my games run smoother? Or will the chipset still just use 224mb?

I'd be extremely grateful for any useful information.

 

It will give the IGP more memory, but won't help with the speed much at all. However, upgrading to 2 GB will give you a noticeable impact on other tasks, such as opening a program or whatnot.

 

Are you running Vista or XP?

I'm guessing its XP.

I'd say that if you'd get a minimal enough improvement with extra RAM, IMHO.
And updating laptop graphic cards really isn't for the faint hearted if it can be done at all - most of the time can't be done.

One other thing that could help load times would be a new 7200RPM hard drive if you don't have one already. I changed mine and the difference was amazing!

 

Nah, it's not going to improve your gaming framerate-wise.

 

Well if i cant improve my framerate by upgrading the hardware, is there any way I can tweak software to make it faster?

The game that's giving me trouble is CounterStrike Source. A game you might be familiar with. Its not on all of the maps, just the big ones like Dust and Office (if you have any idea what i'm talking about). On these maps I cant even play really, the framerate is just so low its not feasible.

And yes, I'm running XP pro.

 

I'm afraid there's little you can do in terms of performance, but you can experiment with the game settings to improve your framerate. For example try adding the -dx7 or -dx8 extension to the game shortcut under "Target:"

 

yeah ive tried all of that. i just thought i would be able to play a pretty standard game on a £500 laptop lol. i suppose not.