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LeftoverCrack

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 2, 2008
44
0
so the graphics card in my early 2007 white 2ghz white macbook is integrated right? so does adding more ram. say.. 4gb from 1gb improve the graphics card? improving frame rates and such?
 
It has no effect on the graphics card: it will not grab more RAM no matter how much RAM you add. It may have a minimal effect on framerates as the game will have to swap to disk less, but it will be minimal.
 
Increasing your RAM may help large applications function more efficiently, and should improve performance generally, but it will have zero effect on your graphics card - if the graphics card is the bottleneck (i.e. for games), then that won't change.
 
alright. so running a game that normally consumes all of cpu load and turns the fans into high gear would play better. and there is no disk. it plays from the hard drive.
 
Note that if you move from having a single memory module to having two, you will see a performance increase, because the video chip will get more memory bandwidth by enabling dual-channel memory mode. But as the MacBook ships with two modules by default, you would have to have gone out of your way to only have one memory module.

Other than that, no. Upgrading system memory will not have a noticeable impact on graphics performance. It *WILL* have a general system speed improvement, though.
 
Note that if you move from having a single memory module to having two, you will see a performance increase, because the video chip will get more memory bandwidth by enabling dual-channel memory mode. But as the MacBook ships with two modules by default, you would have to have gone out of your way to only have one memory module.

Other than that, no. Upgrading system memory will not have a noticeable impact on graphics performance. It *WILL* have a general system speed improvement, though.


video ram speed is more important than anything else in a gaming perspective, but if you have on board video it wont matter since the whole system is too slow to do anything graphically intensive.

IE: overclocking your video ram 100-200mhz will give you MORE FPS than overclocking your GPU 100-200Mhz
 
video ram speed is more important than anything else in a gaming perspective, but if you have on board video it wont matter since the whole system is too slow to do anything graphically intensive.

IE: overclocking your video ram 100-200mhz will give you MORE FPS than overclocking your GPU 100-200Mhz

what is over clocking? im not very technologically geared. can you explain this statement please? 100-200mhz? and gpu? i have no idea what this is?
 
If you're not very tech-savvy you will want to stay away from overclocking. It's telling the computer to run the processor or memory at higher speeds than the manufacturer's default. In some cases this can result in significant improvements in system performance. In other cases, it can result in frying your computer. The term GPU is the same as what you mean when you say graphics card.

To answer your original question: Adding more system ram will not increase the *maximum* amount of ram your GPU can use. But it may increase the amount *available* to your GPU if your system is frequently hitting that 1gb used. It is generally accepted that adding memory is the cheapest performance increase available for almost any system.
 
well im comfortable with computers but this is my first mac machine. is overclocking worth trying? is it simple to switch from overclocked to non?
 
well im comfortable with computers but this is my first mac machine. is overclocking worth trying? is it simple to switch from overclocked to non?

Overclocking is not a mac specific thing and you wont achieve anything trying to overclock your GPU because what you have inside your macbook is like a snail so, to use an analogy, you are not going to get the snail to move any faster by kicking it!
To achieve gaming performance, you need a system with a discreet GPU (which is not what you have). The MBP has a discreet GPU and the gaming performance is just spectacular!
 
oh alright, well mbp is very far out of my price range. maybe in the future. once school debts are over.
 
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