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7 Home Premium video memory

Forum Windows 7 : 7 Home Premium video memory

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mac29   10-22-2009 at 07:25:49 PM

What is the minimum video memory for Windows 7 home premium, w/o aero? I surmise the card doesn't need to be 'WDDM 1.0' if I don't care about Aero yet.

I keep reading 128MB for Aero. However, I seem to be finding people w/7
running on older cards like AGP but it never states how much graphics memory
they've got. I'm hoping whatever I use will be recognized by 7 but experience
tells me drivers will be an issue. Any input would be great.

Thanks.

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Bronze Win 7 badge buwish   10-22-2009 at 09:05:55 PM

I've seen 128MB myself. I've also seen via a cursory search of google that some are doing just fine with 64MB. But why not throw a bit of cash into a new GPU? If you're upgrading your OS, you might as well get a hold of an ATI Radeon 4xxx series, as they are going pretty cheap these days no matter where you look.

------------------------------ -Kevin
Desktop: Q9400(stock,lapped,SpinTechQ)/Intel DP43TF/VTEK 4850(512)/8GB DDR2 800Mhz/X-Fi Titanium Pro/Liteon BD-ROM/Velociraptor/Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Laptop: Toshiba Satellite (M305)/T6400/4GB DDR2 800Mhz/Windows 7 RC 64-bit (for now)
 Reply to buwish
Silver Win 7 badge The_Prophecy   10-23-2009 at 02:51:36 AM

I believe 128MB is needed for Aero to function. But as buwish said, you might as well invest in a newer video card anyway.

WDDM doesn't specifically refer to the card itself, but rather the driver the card uses. WDDM stands for Windows Display Driver Model. Many older cards are "compliant" with WDDM because of Nvidia and AMD's unified driver architecture (support a range of cards with a single driver, rather than write individual drivers for each video card model they produce). These drivers are built against the WDDM , thus allowing older cards to use certain features (such as Aero) under Windows Vista and 7.

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mac29   10-30-2009 at 04:36:42 PM

Thank you both. Prophecy, that's alot more succinct than the minutiae I was reading about WDDM, although I got a similar take on it. Buwish, I'm being selective in updating. PS blew and took my mobo w/it so I've cobbled together a box w/a Duron (& mobo issues) for now : ( But I'm sold on a Core i5 and want DDR3. So it will happen but for now the improvements in upcoming Lynnefield cpu's is also intriguing. Meanwhile I've got a Gig of memory (new) that seems to have driver issues w/XP but should run fine w/7.

Reply to mac29
Sateg   10-31-2009 at 12:10:50 AM

I had aero with my old AGP ATI9600 128mb. So yep, you need 128Mb and PixelShader2.0 or better for run aero.

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