Dedicated Video Ram

[TheMercinary60]

is there a way to increase it? ive heard theres a way todo it through bios but i didnt see an option. im running an hp laptop so from what i understand i cant easily upgrade my video card. but according to can you run it, the only thing its missing is the dedicated memory, any help would be appreciated

[Skuzzy]

Onboard video chips use system RAM and do not have any dedicated RAM.  The more RAM you put aside for the video chip, the less RAM your computer will have to run applications.

To answer your question directly.  Dedicated video RAM is RAM that is built on the video card.  You cannot change it.

[Bizman]

AFAIK Ram is a physical thing. That means you can't increase the amount of it by just altering some settings. Just as you can't change a four cylinder car engine to a V8 by tuning a microchip.

What comes into mind about what you remember having heard, is that most computers with built-in video chips have the option to increase the portion of computer ram used for graphics. True, that will increase the amount of "video ram", but normal ram is much slower than that of video cards. If you have huge amounts of ram in your laptop (like 8 gigs or so) dedicating one or even two for video usage wouldn't cripple the rest of your computer, but it won't turn your regular household machine into a turbo-boosted gaming monster, either. If you find the setting, try to find a balanced setting to get the most out of it, but don't expect wonders to happen.

[edit] Skuzzy, you were faster because you didn't have to do the spell check [/edit]

[TheMercinary60]

AFAIK Ram is a physical thing. That means you can't increase the amount of it by just altering some settings. Just as you can't change a four cylinder car engine to a V8 by tuning a microchip.

What comes into mind about what you remember having heard, is that most computers with built-in video chips have the option to increase the portion of computer ram used for graphics. True, that will increase the amount of "video ram", but normal ram is much slower than that of video cards. If you have huge amounts of ram in your laptop (like 8 gigs or so) dedicating one or even two for video usage wouldn't cripple the rest of your computer, but it won't turn your regular household machine into a turbo-boosted gaming monster, either. If you find the setting, try to find a balanced setting to get the most out of it, but don't expect wonders to happen.

[edit] Skuzzy, you were faster because you didn't have to do the spell check [/edit]

alright thanks, i was thinking if i set some of it aside i could maybe run some of the higher spec games, but i guess ill just go back to wishing for that new game

[Skuzzy]

The only thing more video RAM does is allow more resources to be loaded onto the video card.  Video performance gains are best served with a better GPU, not more video RAM.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The OP is probably confusing the bios setting for 'amount of memory dedicated for graphics' to dedicated video ram.

This setting can be changed in BIOS but the whole concept of having that setting means your hardware is not up to the task. You'll need a separate videocard for gaming that uses it's own built in memory that's typically 5 to 100 times faster than the system ram accessed through PCI-E.

[TheMercinary60]

most of this just shoots over my head all i really have to go off of is what the site says, and it says its the video ram
Features: Minimum attributes of your Video Card
                                    Required    You Have
    Pixel Shader version    3.0    4.0
    Vertex Shader version    3.0    4.0
    Dedicated Video RAM    256 MB    64 MB

[MrRiplEy[H]]

most of this just shoots over my head all i really have to go off of is what the site says, and it says its the video ram
Features: Minimum attributes of your Video Card
                                    Required    You Have
    Pixel Shader version    3.0    4.0
    Vertex Shader version    3.0    4.0
    Dedicated Video RAM    256 MB    64 MB

To put it blunt: You need to invest 150 bucks or more to a new graphics card if you want to play any current games. This site is a good place to start studying: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107.html

[Bizman]

MrRipley, TheMercinary60 is talking about a laptop...

Mercinary, there's no way to add a video card to a laptop. For better gaming performance you'd either need a desktop (recommended) or a gaming laptop. Whichever you choose, the price would be four-digit for a decent one (desktop including monitor). Good hints can be found on this very board, almost every week someone starts a thread about getting a new rig. Don't trust advertisers: In their thinking a "Gamer's Choice" is something that can run King games and Youtube videos smoothly...

[MrRiplEy[H]]

MrRipley, TheMercinary60 is talking about a laptop...

Mercinary, there's no way to add a video card to a laptop. For better gaming performance you'd either need a desktop (recommended) or a gaming laptop. Whichever you choose, the price would be four-digit for a decent one (desktop including monitor). Good hints can be found on this very board, almost every week someone starts a thread about getting a new rig. Don't trust advertisers: In their thinking a "Gamer's Choice" is something that can run King games and Youtube videos smoothly...

Oops I missed the laptop part! Sorry. But basically the fact stays that in order to play properly he needs a better dedicated card - in the case of a laptop that unfortunately means buying a whole new computer. I recently bought an Asus laptop with i7 cpu and nvidia 660M GPU to my wife for 1200 euros. Something like that would run AH2 well. Using a desktop same can be achieved much cheaper.

[TheMercinary60]

i was afraid of that, but it basically confirms my fears, thanks for all the help anyway

[MrRiplEy[H]]

i was afraid of that, but it basically confirms my fears, thanks for all the help anyway

For now you can try disabling other plane skins, shadows, lowering views, minimize textures, disable antialiasing etc.

64Mb is a very limited memory for todays purposes.

[Skuzzy]

Even with everything turned down, the game still needs 256MB of video RAM, as a minimum in order to be able to see all the objects that can come into view.

[Denniss]

This very much sounds like an Intel On-Chip graphics. AFAIR they always have 64 MiB as basic memory and allocate more dynamically (up to the maximum specified in Bios).