How does shared video memory work?

[indigo butterfly]

I have a laptop with a built-in Nvidia geforce 6150 video card. The specs state that it has 64 Mb of dedicated memory and can access 768 Mb in shared video memory. For the purpose of video game compatibility here is the question I have:

If a game requires 128 Mb in video memory, will the game (a) Work on my computer just fine, (b) work but with a performance hit because shared memory is slower than dedicated video memory, or (c) not work at all.

If the answer is (c), then I have to wonder what shared video memory actually accomplishes.

If the answer is (b), how much of a performance hit might I expect?

[T.J.]

As your video card is an integrated one I doubt that it will handle 128 video memory. Games like WOW can work on this machine but not at high resolutions & it will also lag prolly.

[Hockson]

Dedicated memory is what it has onboard and shared is what it takes from the system. But still, that video card wouldnt play very good at all. There are a few reasons.

The 6150 suck, , and the settings might be too high.

Make sure the game settings are on low, such as 800 x 600 and low detail.

Most hard drives are slow on laptops, thats what kills it for gaming. But that shouldnt hurt to much

[TEcH GuRuJI]

You probably don't have enough system RAM. The "shared" memory is actually taken from your system RAM, and it's always very slow. Even if you had all 768MB, I doubt you'd notice much of a performance increase, if you noticed one at all.

If you're looking to game, buy a video card. Preferably at least a mid-range one. See this : How to select a Video Card for your Computer

[hittingray]

Try going and getting yourself maybe a 128mb AGP 8x card, those are good. If your BIOS you can use AGP memory which adds a boost (eg max 256??), eg. let's say your running vista on 96mb card, you can use AGP memory to make it 256 etc.

[Team Leader]

Using part of main memory for the display system's frame buffers, which temporarily hold the rendered content being sent to the screen. Shared memory is typically used in PCs with "integrated graphics," which means the display circuits are on the motherboard rather than housed in a separate, more costly display adapter card.