intel gma 950 ram?

[dragon2611]

do you think apple will remove the 64mb cap in osx on the gma 950, or if anyone will come up with a hack to do it?


if it can be 224mb in windows then why can't it assign more ram to it in osx

also hope they release those opengl otimizations i keep hearing about might mean i get a few more fps in wow

don't expect amazing fps but if it could keep it above 15 that would be sufficent.

 

[Eidorian]

Do you have the Core Duo Mac mini? The OpenGL enhancements are for multi-core/processor machines. I'm not sure about the improvement for integrated graphics either.

Apple set the memory allocation via OS X. It's up to them to change it. No word on hacks for it...yet.

 

[dragon2611]

Do you have the Core Duo Mac mini? The OpenGL enhancements are for multi-core/processor machines. I'm not sure about the improvement for integrated graphics either.

Apple set the memory allocation via OS X. It's up to them to change it. No word on hacks for it...yet.

No i have a powerpc mac mini, But i have a core duo macbook


Tend to play WOW on my desktop pc mostly (7800GT runs it much better) but if im not able to get on my desktop then i sometimes use the macbook

 

[Anonymous Freak]

It doesn't really matter.

Because the GMA 950 uses system RAM for its video RAM, it only really needs to claim enough RAM to fill the frame buffer, for which, 64 MB is sufficient for any resolution, up to and including the 30" Cinema Display. Anything extra on a 'real' video card is for holding textures.

Well, there is a standard in place that allows a video card to use main system RAM to hold textures in case its onboard RAM isn't big enough. In the case of the GMA 950, since it's using system RAM anyway, why bother 'dedicating' it to the video chip when the video chip can just use up 'unclaimed' system RAM when it needs to anyway?

nVidia made a big deal out of this capability a few years ago, releasing a low-end video card that only had enough RAM for the frame buffer, relying solely on system RAM for textures. This went against what video card manufacturers were doing at the time (and are still doing,) and made the cards significantly cheaper, while not reducing performance by a noticeable amount. Unfortunately, people saw a low-end ATI with 64 MB of RAM, or a low-end nVidia with 8 MB, and went with the ATI, even though the nVidia was effectively 'greater than 64 MB' when in real use.

The only time that the amount of dedicated video memory actually matters on a GMA 950 is for games that insist on having a certain minimum amount of reported video RAM.

 

[dragon2611]

oh ok then, although i hope they get those Open gl optimasations out for the macbook, it would be nice to at least see performance compareable to directx in windows

 

[7on]

It doesn't really matter.

Because the GMA 950 uses system RAM for its video RAM, it only really needs to claim enough RAM to fill the frame buffer, for which, 64 MB is sufficient for any resolution, up to and including the 30" Cinema Display. Anything extra on a 'real' video card is for holding textures.

Well, there is a standard in place that allows a video card to use main system RAM to hold textures in case its onboard RAM isn't big enough. In the case of the GMA 950, since it's using system RAM anyway, why bother 'dedicating' it to the video chip when the video chip can just use up 'unclaimed' system RAM when it needs to anyway?

nVidia made a big deal out of this capability a few years ago, releasing a low-end video card that only had enough RAM for the frame buffer, relying solely on system RAM for textures. This went against what video card manufacturers were doing at the time (and are still doing,) and made the cards significantly cheaper, while not reducing performance by a noticeable amount. Unfortunately, people saw a low-end ATI with 64 MB of RAM, or a low-end nVidia with 8 MB, and went with the ATI, even though the nVidia was effectively 'greater than 64 MB' when in real use.

The only time that the amount of dedicated video memory actually matters on a GMA 950 is for games that insist on having a certain minimum amount of reported video RAM.

Exactly - my only gripe with the GMA 950 is the lack of hardware transform and Lighting (a.k.a T&L). Lots of games practically require it. Spiderman (the movie) for Windows won't even install if you don't have it, and that game ran on my old GeForce 3. The 950 only needed T&L and maybe a little faster clock speed for it to be a real go getter.

 

[Eidorian]

It doesn't really matter.

Because the GMA 950 uses system RAM for its video RAM, it only really needs to claim enough RAM to fill the frame buffer, for which, 64 MB is sufficient for any resolution, up to and including the 30" Cinema Display. Anything extra on a 'real' video card is for holding textures.

Well, there is a standard in place that allows a video card to use main system RAM to hold textures in case its onboard RAM isn't big enough. In the case of the GMA 950, since it's using system RAM anyway, why bother 'dedicating' it to the video chip when the video chip can just use up 'unclaimed' system RAM when it needs to anyway?

nVidia made a big deal out of this capability a few years ago, releasing a low-end video card that only had enough RAM for the frame buffer, relying solely on system RAM for textures. This went against what video card manufacturers were doing at the time (and are still doing,) and made the cards significantly cheaper, while not reducing performance by a noticeable amount. Unfortunately, people saw a low-end ATI with 64 MB of RAM, or a low-end nVidia with 8 MB, and went with the ATI, even though the nVidia was effectively 'greater than 64 MB' when in real use.

The only time that the amount of dedicated video memory actually matters on a GMA 950 is for games that insist on having a certain minimum amount of reported video RAM.

TurboCache or HyperMemory would be a great improvement just for the Transform & Lighting support.