GPU memory and System Memory relationship

[deejayburnout]

Afternoon Peeps

What is the relationship between GPU memory and system memory when playing games.

I was playing Skyrim last night and i had 800mb free from my 4GB system ram ( i don't use a swap file ) while i had 600mb free from my 1GB on my GPU.

I was always under the impression that the GPU memory would be used first before using system memory.

Is the is case or not???

Can someone please enlighten me.

Cheers

 

[plasmastorm]

GPU memory is used for the graphical rendering, the system memory is used to run the actual game