Dxdiag.exe shows different video memory than official sources

[atharvkayde]

I have a Nvidia FX1700 graphic card, which is very old and has a video memory of 512mb as told by official Nvidia website. But when I run Dxdiag.exe on my PC as an administrator, and when I go to the video tab, it shows me that I have 2048mb of usable vram which is a lot for me but I know it's showing wrong, Because some of the high end games wouldn't have lagged at high settings if I would've had that much of video memory. So which one is real??! The nvidia company or my Dxdiag. And why is my dxdiag even showing that much memory when I don't have it.

 

[misteriosly]

-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.

Copied from : Difference between shared and dedicated GPU RAM https://shar.es/15n8mY via @tomshardware

Basically DirectX shows Dedicated Video Ram + Shared Ram.

 

[atharvkayde]

-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 is there any way I can get that 2gb of vram instead of 512m to use in games and other stuff?


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.

Copied from : Difference between shared and dedicated GPU RAM https://shar.es/15n8mY via @tomshardware

Basically DirectX shows Dedicated Video Ram + Shared Ram.

So is there any way I can get all the memory together so I can get max performance in games and other memory intensive apps?

 

[misteriosly]

You can't control Shared Ram. Your OS does that. Also Dedicated video ram performance is way greater than shared ram.
What happens is that when your Video card ram(VRAM for short) is full, it starts to use Shared Memory, until some VRAM is freed.
Basically if your VRAM is full most of the time and you experience game stuttering, you need better Video Card with more VRAM, since Shared Ram cant compensate for VRAM.

 

[atharvkayde]

You can't control Shared Ram. Your OS does that. Also Dedicated video ram performance is way greater than shared ram.
What happens is that when your Video card ram(VRAM for short) is full, it starts to use Shared Memory, until some VRAM is freed.
Basically if your VRAM is full most of the time and you experience game stuttering, you need better Video Card with more VRAM, since Shared Ram cant compensate for VRAM.

Ok thanks for the help.