Mon, 2005-21-02 at 04:17 -0300, Pedro Fernandes Macedo wrote: > Mark Panen wrote: > > >Hi > > > >How does this shared RAM story work. My laptop specs state that i have > >512 MB RAM but free only shows about 448, ok so i know 64 is going to > >the vga card. > > > >What my question is, have i got 512 installed or do i have 448 > >installed and a 64 MB vga card, maybe i should answer my own quesion > >as i don't think you get 448 MB RAM. > > > >I just don't understand why free shows up 448 and not 512 ? Is the > >vga chip taking the RAM away on boot ? > > > > > You have a total of 512MB of RAM. To save money easily , the > manufacturer of your laptop decided > that he wouldnt put dedicated memory for the VGA, so he set it up to use > part of the main system memory as > the VGA memory. Call them cheap bastards if you want ;) > After booting , the BIOS reserves the ammount of memory according to the > value set on BIOS and reports the RAM > to be 512MB minus the part reserved for the VGA card , hence the value > of 448MB shown on free... > > If you want , usually you can change this config on the BIOS from 32 MB > up to 128MB (I think.. It's been awhile > since I last used a computer with onboard video) > > -- > Pedro Macedo Just to intrude another question along similar lines: what about for those systems with an AGP or PCI(-X) card that have their own RAM and there is also a similar amount of system RAM alocated to AGP/PCI graphics called "AGP Aperature Size" or similar in the motherboard's BIOS. Why is there a similar amount of system RAM allocated? Dave
