Why my 4850 x2 2gig only show 1 gig

[bloodnight1]

i just bought the card about 2 weeks ago with new system i just built and try figure out why my 4850 x2 2gig only show that i have 1 gig on video card.

 

[Euphoria_MK]

Its only 1GB VRAM per GPU.

It's just bad marketing. They use specs data to market something that is not true.
So since you have 2 GPUs they wrote on the box 2GB when is only 1GB per GPU.

This card is equivalent of two hd4850s with 1GB VRAM each.

 

[daedalus685]

It is not bad marketing, it is poor understandign on most consumers part that makes it an issue. It certainly has 2gig of ram on the card.. It should be understood it is shared as it is a crossfire card.. There are some things someone about to spend a major chuck of cash on should understand before they buy things...

 

[kyeana]

Unfortunatally (if im not mistaken), crossfire configuration doesn't combine the amount of memory that the two cards have. Instead it takes the card with the least amount of memory and runs both cards there.

So even though each of your cards has 1 gig of memory (totaling 2 gigs of memory), the amount of memory available to be used is still only 1 gig.

 

[Euphoria_MK]

Well you can argue both ways, but HD4870 1GB and HD4870x2 2GB naming will give you a false pretense that you are getting a card with 2GPUs and 2GB of VRAM available.
You have to do a detailed research and read some benchmarks before you find out that each GPU uses only 1GB respectively.
What does it hurt to put on the box that the card has 1GB RAM per GPU?
There already has been so many misconceptions on this forum and on other forums about the same topic.

 

[bloodnight1]

i understand that i only has 1 gig per card but the card is built with 2 cards in one if im not mastaken. so does that mean i just to video card running at 1 gig each or just that it run a one gig. i becuase i know there a 4850 x2 1gig video card that why when with the 2 gig one so i be 1 gig per card not just 512 per card

 

[Euphoria_MK]

There are two GPUs on a single PCB board , and the controller chip is the one that splits the job.
GPUz and other programs will report only 1GB since there is only 1GB per GPU, so if you were aware of this than you dont have to worry about it. Your memory is reported correctly.

Cheers and have fun gaming

 

[topper743]

Is this your card?

http://www1.sapphiretech.com/us/products/products_overview.php?gpid=265&grp=3

 

[ainarssems]

Physically You have 2 GB of ram- 1GB for each GPU. Problem is that it needs exactly the same copy of data for both GPUs in both memories. So in reality You have 1GB memory for use. Let's say You load 100MB textures i GPU memory, so it is loaded 100 MB in one GPU's memory and the same 100MB in others memory as well so actually it is taking up 200 MB of Your 2GB (or 100MB of Your 1GB depends how You look at it) The second GB is just a copy of first one.

 

[bloodnight1]

yes that card i have i got the 2 gig one.

another question is should i run this in cross fire mode i just normal. or will it use both video cards at same time.

 

[topper743]

yes that card i have i got the 2 gig one.

another question is should i run this in cross fire mode i just normal. or will it use both video cards at same time.

Yes and that answers your question. To run as a X2 you must enable Xfire. Which is why you are only seeing half of the ram in CCC.

 

[uncfan_2563]

Yes and that answers your question. To run as a X2 you must enable Xfire. Which is why you are only seeing half of the ram in CCC.

ahh i was wondering the answer to that too, so u helped me out aswell.

 

[aoked]

I think it's becuase it's a dual GPU, therefore showing specification of a single GPU.