I dont think thats entirely true. I dont use onboard graphics but i beleive theres settings in the bios where you can choose how much ram it uses. I googled the HD 3200 and it seems it can use up to 512mb of ram
Notebookcheck: ATI Radeon HD 3200 so with 2 gigs of ram installed its probably using either 128mb or 256mb of ram. I dont know for certain though :huh: but checking your bios would be a good idea as you may be able to change it.
I'm not sure where your disagreement is coming from??? Let me clearify
If a video card has 512meg of video RAM (VRAM) and you add 4gig of system memory, you effectively have 4.5gig of total RAM installed! However, since a 32-bit OS only has a max memory address of 4gig, something has to give! Since the video card(s) is automatically allocated memory space, regardless of RAM amount, the sacrificial lamb becomes the added available memory beyond the 4gig limit!!! Meaning anything beyond 4gig is ignored with regards to available memory!!! Available memory means anything outside the realm of the VRAM!!!
Here's two quotes from the link I provided (
http://www.corsair.com/_appnotes/AN8...e_Analysis.pdf, page 2)
However, part of this 4GB ‘address space’ must be reserved for devices that require MMIO (Memory-Mapped Input Output). In simple terms MMIO is a process by which some devices in the PC exchange data with the CPU/memory. One such device is the graphics card, which requires an amount of address space equal to its frame buffer size (the amount of memory installed on the card) to be ‘reserved’ for such data exchanges. This reserved address space is therefore not available to Windows as accessible memory.
Meaning the video card's VRAM (video RAM) takes precedence over any installed RAM going beyond the 4gig limit.
While there are numerous devices in a PC that require MMIO, graphics cards have the most significant impact on available memory since they can be equipped with up to 1GB of on-board memory. This means that the available memory in a PC equipped with a 1GB graphics card will be reduced by at least 1GB. For systems with multiple graphics cards the total amount of memory on all cards installed in the system must be taken into account.
The above statement pretty much sums up my point.
Now I personally don’t think a lot of people with 32-bit OS’s running 4 or more gig of RAM with crossfire/SLI setups give this a lot of thought; nor do I think they understand that they’re just displacing system (Windows) memory with VRAM!!! Especially if they’re trying to push 1gig video cards!!!
Sure, you could argue that the VRAM is being used, true... but mainly for gaming or rendering purposes and not much else!
Just my two cents on my understanding of the 4gig limitation and VRAM under 32-bit OS’s
and just opened internet explorer about 1000 times :D just to see when my comp starts freezing up
unlike now