To those who remember, I decided against the PCI card (I actually got it, tried it out, wasn't satisfied, and returned it) But now I have another question.

I am running windows 98, and have an onboard graphics adapter with memory sharing up to 64mb. I have it set at this, yet windows only shows it as having 31mb. Basically whatever I adjust it to in the bios, it reports as only half of that when I run DXDIAG.


Also in DXDIAG it has AXG Textures (something like this, it's where you can enable/disable direct draw, direct 3d)

Any help appreciated.

If it helps I am running windows 98, 800mhz processor, 1gig ram (also tried it with only 512 ram)

 

What motherboard? What chipset provides the GPU support?
It may be a issue specific to the model, or a BIOS that needs to updated if a newer one exists which is compatible.
(I have a ATI all-in-wonder pro PCI, and it has 8mb on it, 4 built in, and 4 on a SODIMM. Strange? Depending on what I check, it says it has either 8MB or 6MB. The tuner never worked, but the I/O's do. Never figured it out, don't really care. If I were to do more graphics intensive work on that machine I would get something better.)

What exactly was wrong with the PCI card? I assume that the perfomance of the integrated is inadaquate, and the cost of the PCi card couldn't prove its worth.

gj ______My .02.

 

How many system RAM the onboard video uses is dynamically determined by the OS/BIOS. The value you specify in the BIOS is the max value, but unless you're running a graphics intensive application the system won't allocate that much RAM to the video.