2 applications which I use (Photoshop and Nikon Capture NX2) need a lot of memory - more than the 2 Gb I have on my current system. I am looking at buying a replacement system which can have 4 Gb installed, but this has an NVIDIA GeForce 7050 GPU which uses shared memory - up to 512 Mb of it, I think.
Bearing in mind the XP limit of 3 Mb, I am concerned that, after the GPU uses it’s full allocation of 512 Mb of RAM, I will be left with only 2.5 Gb of RAM for my applications - which is not really a big enhancement to my current RAM resource. Is there some way that I can force the DVMT (Dynamic Video Memory Technology) to supply the GPU with RAM from the 3 Gb to 4 Gb range which Windows XP cannot use? This would then improve my RAM resource for applications by 50%.
Windows XP will use up to 3 GB of the available RAM. Video memory should be taken from the available RAM before the OS boots. So if you have 4 GB of RAM with 512 MB of shared video memory, Windows XP should “see” 3.5 GB of available RAM but use only 3 GB.
In other words, the video memory is taken from the system RAM, not from the Windows XP’s memory space.
A partial exception to this would be any video card with nVidia’s TurboCache or ATI’s HyperMemory technology. With these technologies, the video card driver will use Windows XP’s RAM to help the video card. This memory is not permanently used, but only as needed (when running 3D apps like games).