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Local-Bus Video Standards 249
Determining the Amount of RAM
on Your Display Card
Because the size of video memory is increasingly important to most
computer users, it’s useful to know how much memory your display
card has onboard.
Table 10.15 summarizes some methods you can use.
Table 10.15
Video Card
Methods for Determining the Amount of RAM on a
Method Benefits Cautions
Use memory/resolution If the settings work Method assumes that video
table earlier and adjust (a reboot is often card is set correctly by system;
video settings to options required), you have often can’t be used to detect
requiring 1MB, 2MB, 4MB, at least that much RAM memory above 4MB because
and 8MB. on your video card. of driver limitations.
Use third-party system Universal solution for Must use up-to-date diagdiagnostics
to probe video organizations with mixed nostics; might be confused
card. display card standards. by shared memory technologies
found on low-cost
systems.
Use diagnostics provided Best source for technical Must use different programs
by video card or video
chipset maker to probe
video card.
information. for different chipsets.
Given the low cost and high performance of today’s video cards,
you should seriously consider replacing any video card with less
than 8MB of display memory onboard because even the least powerful
cards in use today far outstrip top-end models of just a couple
of years ago.
Local-Bus Video Standards
If you are in the market for a new video card, you need to consider
your upgrade options. All video cards worth considering use a socalled
local-bus technology, which uses a high-speed connection to
the CPU that bypasses the slow ISA standard in use for many years.
The major current standards are PCI (Peripheral Component
Interconnect) and AGP (Advanced Graphics Port). The original
local-bus standard, VL-Bus (the VESA Local-Bus), became outdated
when the 486 CPU was replaced by Pentium-class CPUs.
PCI and AGP have some important differences, as Table 10.16
shows.