hi guys,

i just bought a work horse computer for my animation etc. i brought a sparkle 8400gs as it was recommended to be by the store instead of the asus card i had planed on. when i got the system i looked at the gfx card box and there was a sticker on the front saying...

"maximum supporting up to *512/**2047mb
*windows xp system memory : 1GB
**windows vista system memory : 4GB"

i was pretty shocked to see that i can only have 4 gigs of ram? wtf. i was going to put another 4gigs in my comp in a few weeks for a total for a total of 8gigs. now im worried ill crash the comp due to this stickers warning.

what do you guys think?

XP and Vista in 32 bit form can only handle 4 gb or ram. You will have to get a 64 bit version of either to run the 8 gb of ram you desire.

As for the 8400 mooching off of your system ram, I don't think you will see it going over 512mb alocated towards the video card. Ever.

BTW that 8400GS is going to perform very poorly in Animation i would recommend a HD 3650 for $100, or a 2600XT, ATI cards have more Shaders which in your case will work very favorably, HD3650/2600XT have a 120SP compared to the 8400GS' 16, also the 8400GS has a very weak 64bit bus whereas those have 128bit buses.

HD 3650
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127331

2600XT GDDR4 Verions, Free shipping and 30 MIR $75
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127305

simply put the 8400GS is a really weak card and is best used if your Integrated cannot handle a High resolution or HDCP.

And i believe those stickers are "recommended" and by no means mean that you only have 4GB support because of the card, u can have all 8GB and the card will still work(just make sure you have 64-bit OS)

um i do have a 64 bit version of vista. i have been told that the graphics card doesnt really matter @ all in programs like illustrator, photoshop, and flash. which is why i decided to spend the xtra money on the ram. i use cinema 4d alot and cant see the benefit to having a better gfx card. the cpu is the most important part to calculate all of the vector components and then the ram to accommodate all the texture information. if you buy a mac that is called a designing / animating system they are fitted with weak gfx cards also.

i dont think that my card is the version that eats into the system memory to make up for the small 256mb is it?

http://www.sparkle.com.tw/product_ [...] sub_id=118
i think this is my gfx card as the other 2 options are passivly cooled.

this card is extremely weak in terms of gaming though as i put it through 3d mark 05 just 4 a laugh and it got around the same as my old fx5900xt =D and some ppl reckon that the play crysis on this lol.

8400GS hmmm.....see my sig.
http://valid.x86-secret.com/show_oc.php?id=314696

The 8400GS uses system RAM as GPU memory. The Warning refers to the amount of memory the card will take from your system, not to the maximum amount of RAM your system will run with.

Hmmm....pretty good results. What happens when you put enough memory on board to actually do anything with all that speed?