[suicide007]

I am setting up my SLI 8800gts's (EVGA 320mb). I was messing around with some stuff and i noticed that my Vista was only recognizing 256mb as dedicated video memory, even though both of my graphics cards have 320mb, so it should total around 640mb.

Is my computer using my video card memory as ram? I thought the purpose of shared memory was to use ram for the vid card, but it seems to be doing just the opposite in this case.

If that is indeed the case, does anybody know of a way to fix it?

Or, is the problem that 32-bit vista cannot handle 2 gigs of ram plus 640mb video memory? because that would make a whole lot more sense. In that case, I might be able to improve my video performance by removing half my ram, right? wow, that sounds absurd.

So, my question is, "is there a way to dedicate all of my video cards' memory to dedicated video memory?"

[AP4LIFETN]

I dunno why it reads 256 instead of 320, maybe someone else can elaborate..but ur total isn't 640mb, its only 320mb because the data on each card has to be mirrored, so effectively u only have 320mb video memory. thats how dual GPU's work for the time being because the memory can't be shared.

[[t..o..m]]

32-bit operating systems can support 4GB of memory (RAM and GPU combined) so that isn't the problem.

What kind of motherboard do you have? As it sounds as if you have an on board video card which may be getting its memory from your RAM. Please get back to us with more details.

[suicide007]

The vista sp1 update seems to have addressed the issue. My computer now reports 320mb dedicated video memory, but whether or not it utilizes this memory is still a mystery to me. I havent noticed a difference in games.

[baron5]

thats wierd, not that u didnt get all the 320mb deidcated, but that sp1 actually did something. wat were use using to detect ur video ram?

[meat_helmet]

That is pretty strange that it was only reading as 256mb, did this happen on anything else such as everest??

Vista SP1 has a fix in it that forces the OS to recognize more than 3.5GB of ram for 32 bit. But i do not think it utilizes the extra ram as it is a 32 bit limitation, i think Vista is now just forced to show how much ram is installed.

[aspire]

Originally Posted by AP4LIFETN

I dunno why it reads 256 instead of 320, maybe someone else can elaborate..but ur total isn't 640mb, its only 320mb because the data on each card has to be mirrored, so effectively u only have 320mb video memory. thats how dual GPU's work for the time being because the memory can't be shared.

Data is not mirrored on both cards.

Evidently you don't understand that in SLi each card renders half the screen. So there is no data being mirrored. It is unique to each card.

[baron5]

like i was saying what did u use to mintor these conclusions? have u tried dxdiag or everest or sumthin.