video card ram benefitss

[jeffvoight70]

I bought a new desktop. It says in the specs That some of the ram is dedicated to the video card. If I install a video card with ram, does the dedicated ram revert to system? And if it does, is it automatically or do I need to do something to make it available?

 

[anotherdrew]

Yes, if you use a dedicated video card you no longer need to use system RAM for video. Some BIOS will make this change automatically when you don't use onboard video, some don't. Check your user manual to see where in BIOS to set video memory size (sometime called frame buffer).

One warning ... Desktop computer built by the big name companies often have a power supply that leaves very little head room for added components and video card draw comparatively high amounts of power. Check your power supply wattage rating and be ready to upgrade the PSU if you do decide to buy a GPU.

 

[camieabz]

It should, but you will have to disable the onboard RAM in BIOS if you want all that RAM back, but first make sure the BIOS is set to prefer the card before onboard, and that the OS 'takes' the new card as default. I had a similar thing. It wasn't too difficult to setup.

 

[Wolfshadw]

I bought a new desktop. It says in the specs That some of the ram is dedicated to the video card. If I install a video card with ram, does the dedicated ram revert to system? And if it does, is it automatically or do I need to do something to make it available?

I think more appropriate is, "Does it matter?".

Unless you're system is running on 4GB of RAM, it's unlikely that you'll miss the RAM "dedicated" to on-board graphics. If you do, then you should probably upgrade your RAM amount anyway.

-Wolf sends