The Stealthinator :
Hi,
Can anyone please tell me what is really the difference between "dedicated system memory", "dedicated graphics memory" and "shared system memory" when relating to graphics?
Thx in advance.
People are pretty sloppy about the use of the term memory for a computer.
but you only wanted to know about 3 general cases:
-Graphic chip external to the CPU will have a very small amount(if any) of dedicated memory that only it has access to. It will try to reserve a chunk of system motherboard RAM for its use (BIOS settings will determine the size)
- Graphics chip internal to the CPU, will have access to some of the CPU's very,very high speed memory, then get further memory from the system RAM on the motherboard.
- Graphics memory on a external card, is very high speed memory that only the graphics card gets to use. dedicated memory.
so:
- Shared system memory: basically the operating system shares its slower RAM in the motherboard SIMM slots with the graphics chip.
- Dedicated graphics memory: the graphic hardware has memory only it can use
- System memory: areas of memory that only the Operation system can use.