Vista - Reduce Vista Video memory allocation

Dear All,

I have 4GB of RAM, and a nVidia 8600M with 256MB of RAM.

However, the system allocated 800MB for the video, leaving only 3.2GB
for the system.

May I know how can I reduce the shared memory?

Thanks in advance.

CKKwan <ckkwan@xxxxxx-deja.com> wrote in news:3f3ff0ab-f1d8-4286-bd19-
6e9de6bfa8c7@xxxxxx:
No it didn't. You are using Vista32bit and need to switch to Vista64bit to
get use of all of the ram. 32bit OS can only utilize a max of 4GB of memory
address space and all of your hardware needs address space too so that is
subtracted from the 4GB of usable ram. Use a 64bit OS and you won't have
that limitation of 4GB total address space.

"CKKwan" <ckkwan@xxxxxx-deja.com> wrote in message
news:3f3ff0ab-f1d8-4286-bd19-6e9de6bfa8c7@xxxxxx
Are you running Vista 32-bit?

ss.

"CKKwan" wrote:
"shared" means the memory can be used by both OS's applications and graphics:
if you're not playing games it will be used by normal applications.
if you're playing games it will be used by graphics card/games.
Don't care about it.

CKKwan <ckkwan@xxxxxx-deja.com> wrote:
I think you're misinterpreting what you're seeing. You need 256MB of
address space for your video RAM, and a bunch more address space for
your BIOS, and maybe some more for other things. That's why you're
down to 3.2GB.

The only way around that is to expand the available address space. And
the only way to do that is to go to a 64-bit OS.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(Shell/User)
Slattery_T@xxxxxx
http://members.cox.net/slatteryt

On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:05:41 -0700 (PDT), CKKwan <ckkwan@xxxxxx-deja.com>
wrote:

No it didn't. Here's the situation:

All 32-bit client versions of Windows (not just Vista/XP) have a 4GB
address space. That's the theoretical upper limit beyond which you can
not go.

But you can't use the entire 4GB of address space. Even though you
have a 4GB address space, you can only use *around* 3.1GB of RAM.
That's because some of that space is used by hardware and is not
available to the operating system and applications. The amount you can
use varies, depending on what hardware you have installed, but can
range from as little as 2GB to as much as 3.5GB. It's usually around
3.1GB.

Note that the hardware is using the address *space*, not the actual
RAM itself. The rest of the RAM goes unused because there is no
address space to map it too.



There's nothing to reduce. The only way to use more memory is to use
64-bit Vista.

Why do you need so much memory? Unless you use particularly
memory-hungry programs, it's unlikely that you would see any
performance improvement by going above 3.2GB.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP - Windows Desktop Experience
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

what you are saying is irrelevant...

I do have 2GB of RAM and vista allocates shared 256MB memory for graphics. Note, my video memory is already 512MB which I think in any way my system won't need a shared memory. This actually slows down the video and games playback due to memory speed difference between the Video memory and the shared video memory.

Don't get me wrong, allthough you're a microsoft whatever... I think you're just misleading us and on all of postings regarding this issue you always point to the BIOS and the RAM limit which is in anyway IRRELEVANT.

WHat you need to do is to ask your programmer and engineers and seek an answer HOW TO DISABLE IT.

now you are posting tosh
this is a user group MS programers & engineers are not here.

If you are a heavy gamer, clearly with the memory/card specs you posted your
PC is not a leading edge gaming PC

"smdc1981" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
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