[GDawgtuk]

The question is, this does software item exist. Here is what I am searching for and heres the story behind it. I wanted a cheap laptop that was capable of playing games. I own a Dell XPS laptop so I have a primary unit but sometimes the wife wants to jump on WOW and I hate to build a desktop just for that. I bought a Dell at an extremely discounted price. I was able to put Windows XP on there but it is still using the "ATI RADEON® Xpress1150 256MB HyperMemory™ (Integrated)" which basically means it is shared memory so I need to find a way to dedicate memory for it. I was wondering if there was a program that I could download that would allow me to dedicate 256mb of ram for only video. The laptop is going to have 2 gigs of ram right off the bat so I wouldnt worry about dedicating even 512mb to help the video.

Is there anything like this?

Even if it isnt a program, is there a way within windows XP that can dedicate memory to the videocard.

[Grongle]

Well, the computer will take what it needs off the top, automatically.

When you use a system with onboard memory, you can see the effect of this. Check your RAM, and it will not show you 2048. It might show you, for example, some total like 2016.

And that's what you want. Well, it would be if you weren't using it for gaming. I don't know if you're going to get what you want there. Plus notebooks have their quasi-dedicated, quasi-shared way of doing things, which, when you research it out, tends to simply be a limitation of notebooks. Their graphics are not very good, and neither is their sound.

Recently the new AMD 780G chipset has been advertising that it does EXACTLY what you are asking for. You can set the system to dedicate memory, and even whether you want it to dedicate 128, 256, or 512. The chipset is available for desktops, but its most far-reaching implications are for future notebooks.

That means the onboard memory is very much like a "built-in dedicated memory card". But I think your request is a bit ahead of its time, because, AFAIK, the little 780G is the first one to do that.

[Spotmoonpc]

Hi there, if you restore the laptop back to Vista (assume its originally a Vista laptop) you can use Windows Ready Boost to allocate additional memory to the laptop using a USB flash drive. Take a look at this link about Ready Boost:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...eadyboost.mspx