8800GTX shows 1536MB available as graphic memory

[nZone]

I've never checked the 8800GTX property since I installed Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I happened to check it last night and I saw:

1536MB available graphic memory.
768MB built-in video memory.

It looks like Vista is deallocated 768MB memory (dynamically up to 768MB) from the system and uses this as cache for the 8800GTX. I wonder how it is going to be used; how it impacts graphic performance? Will it have any other performance implications?

 

[aka1nas]

Graphic's RAM is virtualized in Vista. It's not going to page out your game data while you play unless you need more grahics RAM.

 

[nZone]

I wonder what type of games (or future games) or driver settings that would exhaust the built-in video memory. In case where it does exceed; the system would page out to disk the same as the OS does, correct? I don't know if this will make it better or worst. I assume it'll be worst since it is paging to disk.
Talking about paging; would ReadyBoost helps in this case (for video)?

 

[phantom404]

I have Mobility 1600 in my laptop thats 512 but reads lil over 1 gig of memory in vista 32 bit

 

[nZone]

Did some google search and came across this blog. http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2006/04/02/566767.aspx

It's all good but now my 2GB system memory probably doesn't cut it any longer.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

i don't seewhy this "feature" exist. paging video ram to hdd is gonna be so slow it'll brinthe entire system to its knees. in fact paging ram bring down my system.

 

[nZone]

It is more like this if paging does occur: video memory => system memory => hdd.
Regardless it will be slower since system memory is only a DDR2 while video ram is DDR3/DDR4.
And if a system that has only 1GB of memory; the video paging probably jumps directly to hdd.

 

[chizow]

There's some games out even now that can probably use 768MB of video RAM w/ 4x AA. You can use RivaTuner on a 2nd panel to monitor RAM usage, which is pretty helpful for me in determining how much AA I can run before I start seeing penalties. I started using it when I saw a review site use it to show how the 320MB GTS was getting slammed at higher resolutions + AA.

I used to think the extra RAM variants on cards were a waste of money, but the latest round of games and the 8800 GTS' ability to run high resolution + AA has made me change my mind. What I'd like to see in the future is card drivers flushing the buffer more often instead of hitting system memory. Even if it results in lower framerates, there will be less "slowdown" and a smoother experience overall.

 

[BFG10K]

The virtualization should avoid the sudden thrashing that happened in the past when you hit the VRAM limit. The transition should be more graceful now.