# RAM as VRAM?



## Asix (Aug 17, 2006)

This isn't exactly a problem, rather a question (I'm curious abou this).
I've got Club3D Radeon 9600 (non - pro, boo hoo for me), and it has only 128 MB of Video RAM. Because I've got 1 GB of system RAM, and I don't play any memory - intensive games or anything, I wonder if there is a way to make the GPU to use a bit of system RAM as VRAM? Is there any BIOS mod or some program that could do that? I'm pretty sure that would speed up games and everything, but I don't know if that's possible on classic AGP x8 slot?


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## ebackhus (Apr 21, 2005)

There's no way of directly converting RAM to VRAM, but the AGP system does use a RAM arpeture. Through the BIOS you can tell the AGP system to use anywhere from 32MB to over 512MB of RAM for additional storage for the card.

Rule of thumb: NEVAR use more than 50% of your installed RAM. The video card won't go and steal it right away, but it will if it needs it.


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## MunkyPhil (Apr 7, 2006)

This isn't a rule and others may disagree with me but I set the AGP aperture to 64Mb for every 512Mb system RAM I have.

After that I alter it to get the best all round performance from my games.


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## HawMan (May 12, 2006)

So if you change the AGP aperture you get abit better performance? So a 64mb card could be set to 128mb? or am i thinking of something else lol


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## MunkyPhil (Apr 7, 2006)

Yeah, you can set aside system RAM that will be used as texture memory but only when it is needed, it is used as system RAM otherwise. You don't want to be caught with too little system RAM though when playing games so it's a compromise and you'd have to find the combination that works best.


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## Asix (Aug 17, 2006)

Yeah, but I've got 1 GB of RAM, and my AGP Aperture Size is set to 256 MB (maximum value that is allowed by my board) and when I decrease it the performance in my games decreases, too.
I wonder if there is some software which could force the GPU to use additional, say, 128 MB of system RAM for it's purposes of storage, besides the Aperture Size. Is that actually possible on a standard AGP bus?


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## TechDragon (Aug 21, 2006)

Is the same possible with PCI express video cards? Because I have a lot of RAM and adding extra performance to my PCIe card would be nice.


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## GarnetCompy (Feb 15, 2005)

No. As far as I know, the nature of PCI and PCI-E Limits all activities to on-card memory.


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## Asix (Aug 17, 2006)

What about AGP architecture?


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## Fr4665 (Nov 18, 2004)

GarnetCompy said:


> No. As far as I know, the nature of PCI and PCI-E Limits all activities to on-card memory.


not true.

nvidia release their 6200turbo pcie or what ever they called it with 16mb on the card and it could utilize up to 256mb from the system memory as VRAM.


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## Asix (Aug 17, 2006)

Yeah, that's the virtual memory for GPU, but it's available only on PCI Express architectures. Is there something similar for AGP?


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## UncleMacro (Jan 26, 2005)

Using motherboard RAM as video RAM requires extra hardware called an address remapping table. It's needed because the motherboard RAM which can be at various physical addresses has to appear to be contiguous addresses to the video card. There's no quick way to fake this in software in the GPU. You need hardware to make it work. As a result, all you've got is the AGP aperture for AGP video cards and TurboCache (NVIDIA) and HyperMemory (ATI).


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