Graphics Card Memory

Buy a good video card and install it. They are quite cheap these days. You are limeted in your current RAM, so do not take anymore of it away.

If the bottle neck is the video processing, yes a new card with power helps. If the bottle neck is CPU cycles you need more free memory. Sometimes these built in video can be made to share system memory. Look in the setup and see if the card is hogging memory and starving your application, then limit the card to it's onboard memory. for further speed, add more system memory. An e-mail to the maker of the graphics software yu are using might bring some other suggestions.

Hi,

Once i faced the same problem and it was solved by installing Graphics card.

No option to increase the memory size as asked by you.

Happy new year

Best regards

jk

I would go with the reccomendation of getting a new video card but... If you really want to change your onboard graphics memory, while the computer is loading up the CMOS (Black screen with memory check etc...) every motherboard is a little different but it is usually somewhere along the lines of pressing delete or F2 or F8 and going around in the settings and finding your onboard graphics controller. WARNING YOU CAN FRY YOUR COMPUTER PLAYING AROUND IN HERE IVE SEEN IT HAPPEN!!! The best thing is to download a program called CPU-Z(google it) and find the model name of your motherboard if you don't already know it and google a manual for it and it should tell you all the exact buttons to push and where the settings are to changed the amount of memory shared with your graphics.

You probably can't change it. Typically this is based on the onboard graphic controller/motherboard configuraton and if it is changeable would most likely be through a BIOS setting, not through windows. You access the BIOS at boot time, typically by pressing the delete key. You may see such a message briefly at startup or you may not. Once windows starts to install it is too late. Consult your manual or, open the computer and get the motherboard manufacturer and model number and look on the web.

With the computer open, or if you have manual, find out if there is a slot for a graphics card. All motherboards with onboard graphics will usually have one except for the low end name brand computers or lowest quality motherboards. If yours is only 32 MB it is either old or low end, however if it has an expansion slot for an add-in video card that will be the route you want to take.

Powerful graphics cards are very inexpensive now, but you have to know the specs of the graphics adaptor slot. It would typically be an AGP slot of between 2x and 8x speed, or if the machine is pretty new, it might be a PCIe (also known as PCI-16 or PCI Express)

If you have no expansion slot for a video card, a new motherboard is a viable option. For your processor they start at about $40 with an expansion slot for a video card, which could cost as little as about $50 for your purposes. You might need to buy some memory depending on what is in your present machine: if its 3 256 MB boards, you will have to pick up a 512 MB board unless you get a new motherboard with 3 or 4 memory slots. IF it has one 512 and one 256 MB boards, you may be ok but you want to match the motherboard so it will accept you present processor and memory type. Used parts are an option.

Give us more information please.

BTW, nothing necessarily wrong with "generic" PCs. If they are made from name brand or good quality components they will be better than most name brands in the same price range. I use nothing but .. but then I build them myself so I select each part based on exactly what I want.

Yes the BIOS on the board should allow you to choose how much ram you require for your largest, rather most demanding user program on your system. You can set a max usage in the BIOS and then choose to use the system cache and use the video cache for the system, this gives windows the extra kick to help run in the program requirements on your system.

Hi to all: thanks a lot for your good will and useful advices. I can tell that I set up the problem doing two things.

1.- I let the system to allocate more memory for the virtual graphic card which is built in the mother board, raising it from 32 to 64 MB. I did that from the BIOS set up. This action betters the situation, but was not the solution.

2.- Then I remembers that this soft has an environmental set that sometimes makes an incompatibility with the graphic card. In a file used to set up the installation, each time you run the soft, its necessary to the change the "hardware acceleration" from ON to OFF, and the problem disappears!!

I tell to participants of this forum that I didn't expect too many responses due to the New Year celebration, so I was surprised of the number and quality of them.

Good year for all !!!!!!

Gabriel, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Glad you were able to solve your problem.

"I tell to participants of this forum that I didn't expect too many responses due to the New Year celebration, so I was surprised of the number and quality of them."

Hmmmmmm I wonder if that says anything about the social life of engineers?

Have Happy New Year!

Hi Greg: some days ago I hear some definition about engineers (I translate it as I can): "a person who deals better with things than with persons..."

Gabriel

Yes Gabriel ..

"Engineers prefer dealing with machines over dealing with people" (Machines are predictable you see)

There is at least a kernel of truth to that and the observation that engineers tend to make poor managers from a personnel perspective.

Good Luck!