Video card with no video RAM

[jerrysl]

I have a Lenovo notebook with some decent hardware and Windows 7 32bit. The worst part of my hardware is my graphics card, which has no video RAM at all. It allocates system RAM as it needs it. Here is a portion of its diagnostic:

[cpp]
Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator Driver for Mobile Report


Report Date: 11/27/2009
Report Time[hr:mm:ss]: 21:23:11
Driver Version: 8.15.10.1872
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional* , (6.1.7600)
Default Language: English
DirectX* Version: 11.0
Physical Memory: 2008 MB
Minimum Graphics Memory: 32 MB
Maximum Graphics Memory: 780 MB
Graphics Memory in Use: 57 MB
Processor: x86 family 6 Model 15 Stepping 13
Processor Speed: 1995 MHZ
Vendor ID: 8086
Device ID: 2A42
Device Revision: 07


* Accelerator Information *

Accelerator in Use: Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset Family
Video BIOS: 1659.0
Current Graphics Mode: 1280 by 800 True Color (60 Hz)
[/cpp]


I'm curious about a few things (please understand that these questions are for gaming considerations):
■How good is the processor speed of the video card?

■If I installed Windows 7 64bit and increased the system ram to be 6 or 8 gigs, would there be any performance improvement in games? I understand that the video card is not advanced enough to do some complex shaders and things; I'm not trying to max out all my video settings, I just want my games to be less choppy.

My rationale is that the 64bit OS will make better use of a large amount RAM (>=4GB) and the dynamically allocated video memory will be increased without using up too much system RAM.

So could this work? I've checked with Intel and Lenovo's website and it looks like my system will have no driver issues with 64bit.


Here's some more info
Processor: Intel Pentium Dual CPU T3200 @ 2.00GHz 2.00GHz
RAM: 2GB system RAM

Some info on my type of video card (mine is Mobile Intel® 4 Series Express Chipset Family)
http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-029090.htm
http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/intelgm45/

 

[brockh]

Unfortunately you will not be able to play anything more than maybe Counter-Strike or a similar game with those settings, and it may not even run well. The integrated graphics your chipset is using is very weak and only intended for light multimedia use; I'm not even sure if it can handle HD well.

 

[jerrysl]

Are you talking about the proposed setup or the current one? I can play Counter Strike and any HL1 mod no problem with my current setup. I'm looking to run higher end games at lower settings smoothly (ex. HL2).

 

[apache_lives]

For games you need a GAMING unit - you have a business/home use setup by the sounds of it (Integrated intel etc)

 

[jitpublisher]

Your graphic chipset is not made to run games. No matter what you do, it will never run any game well that demands much out of a video card.

 

[jerrysl]

Ok, I know what my computer was designed for. I understand that it is not a gamer. You aren't answering my questions, and you may not understand what I'm asking.

I am not looking to play high end games with max settings. I am looking for a noticeable boost in frame rates by maximizing the available resources (RAM). I want to use this hardware to its full potential. If I use a 64bit OS and increase the system's RAM to between 4-8 GB, perhaps my computer will use the resources more efficiently. Think about it: if a game is using say, 500MB of my system RAM for graphics, then that leaves about 1500MB to the OS and the rest of the game, which isn't a lot considering that Windows 7 uses almost 1GB for itself.

I'm not asking what type of computer I have; I just told you in my original post. I'm asking:
A) if my video card has a decent processor speed
B) if my proposed setup will squeeze more FPS from my system, given the nature of the video RAM

 

[brockh]

Ok, I know what my computer was designed for. I understand that it is not a gamer. You aren't answering my questions, and you may not understand what I'm asking.

I am not looking to play high end games with max settings. I am looking for a noticeable boost in frame rates by maximizing the available resources (RAM). I want to use this hardware to its full potential. If I use a 64bit OS and increase the system's RAM to between 4-8 GB, perhaps my computer will use the resources more efficiently. Think about it: if a game is using say, 500MB of my system RAM for graphics, then that leaves about 1500MB to the OS and the rest of the game, which isn't a lot considering that Windows 7 uses almost 1GB for itself.

I'm not asking what type of computer I have; I just told you in my original post. I'm asking:
A) if my video card has a decent processor speed
B) if my proposed setup will squeeze more FPS from my system, given the nature of the video RAM

I don't believe you're understanding the answers we're giving you.

A) As far as your "video card processor speed" it is incredibly lackluster and will not be able to be improved upon; it's bad.
B) Video memory requires either a powerful unit to take advantage of it or a large resolution in which it can be used to store textures in; your unit is not powerful by any means so it will not be able to take advantage of any memory over 128MB or 256MB (not to mention it's not dedicated graphics memory, just normal memory and shared) and your resolution is very low so it will be mostly CPU bound in the first place, which is also not good because your processor is not very fast either.

Short story: You won't be squeezing any extra performance out, sorry. You may see performance boosts in other areas like multimedia and encoding when switching to x64 and adding more memory, but games will not be one of them.

 

[jerrysl]

Thank you. Those were direct answers to my questions. Looks like I won't be trying this setup.