Ram upgrade = better graphics?

Question

I have a getway NV series and how dar anyone talk bad about it. It rocks! my ? is tho i have an ATI Radeon HD 4200 video card that is shared with system memmory up to 2gb. no i have 4gb or ram and if i upgrade to 8gb can i play more graphic intense games? and with my laptop be even more fast?

Answer 1

It does depend on the graphics card in the laptop and what type of memory it has available to it.

If you have the 64 bit edition of Windows then yes you can use 8Gb of RAM as long as your model actually supports it, many will still only utilise a maximum of 4Gb so check the Gateway website for the specific model number (which you don't specify) and see if it will use 8Gb of RAM.

Will it speed up your laptop? unlikely. If it already has 4Gb then in that respect it is already probably as fast as it is going to get, you may be able to squeeze a bit more by increasing the virtual memory but W7 is fairly good at optimising what it can from your memory already installed.

As to the games play, if the card is using the 2Gb max available to it (with 4Gb it is likely to already) then the extra memory will be dedicated to system performance and it may help but not a great deal. The more memory available to the VGA the more graphics tasks it can perform, shading, lighting etc, the more pixels it can produce the smoother the video performance will be, the better FPS (Frames Per Second) you will get. There are limitations but if you can maximise the systems resources then you should get a better performance. Shut down as many background services as possible (any update programs - JAVA, Printer, iTunes, Real Player, P2P) and this will all help increase what the machine can do.

Answer 2

Sadly no, your GPU doesn't use that much RAM. Going to 8 gigs of RAM will not speed up your performance.



The GPU is a graphics processor, and currently you will probably have heard of "dedicated" graphics and "integrated" graphics processors.



The main difference between the 2 is that dedicated GPU's have their own on-board Video memory and thus don't have to share the same memory pipeline as normal system RAM. Thus they usually outperform integrated cards by a mile. Dedicated GPU's usually also have a much larger number of texture units and cores, so they also pack a lot more processing grunt.



Integrated GPU's on the other hand lack their own onboard memory and have to share resources with the processor. This means the memory pipeline has to serve both the GPU and the CPU.

On top of that it also reduces the amount of memory your CPU can use because some of it is being used to store textures etc.

Integrated GPU's are also much, much weaker than dedicated GPU's because they don't pack enough texture units / ROP's.

Past 4 gigs of RAM, anything you add to it doesn't change the fact that it is still an integrated GPU.



Adding a bigger fuel tank to a slow car won't make it win any races.

The only way to speed it up is upgrade it's engine.



I don't recommend wasting your money on extra RAM. Go get yourself a dedicated card like a Radeon 4670 or even a Radeon 4850.

Answer 3

Only 3GB or less can be used for 32 bit operating systems, the 4GB or more you need 64 bit operating system. But yeah 8GB will improve game play but not much, if you want to do that you will need to get a better graphics card. All the "Shared" means is that it will boost the graphics to that much if NOTHING else is using it and it's just a "boost" and will never reach that high and it will always fluctuate.

Answer 4

wont help as much as you might think, hd4200 is not really fast enough for comfortable 3D gaming, adding more memory might help a little if you are using high detail and a high resolution, but it will only go as fast as the hd4200 can go. a 4200 has either 40 or 80 stream processors, and gaming video cards have 10 to 20 times as much, between 400 and 1600 stream processors. if it's a laptop, they used hd4200 because it's low power, if its a desktop, then it's because it's cheap, and in a desktop you can upgrade it.



here's the specifications of hd4200,

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-4000/ati-radeon-hd-4200/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-4200-specificatications.aspx

here's is a popular gaming card, the hd5770 (800 stream processors)

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5770/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5770-specifications.aspx

Answer 5

upgarding the RAM wont help your graphics card it is going to help something of your computing device yet thats it, in case you like greater out of you graohics card chicken you could desire to get a computing device of improve your graphics card yet i dont think of you could with macs so i think of your slightly caught with it sorry to be abit blunt.

Answer 6

It will help a bit. But you can only go past 4gb of ram if you have a 64bit version of windows.

Answer 7

Yes :) Your RAM does contribute to your graphics which in turn makes them more crisp and anti-lag. 4GB RAM is great but 8GM RAM will improve your graphics dramatically :D Good luck ..