Q: I have an ASUS M2A-VM motherboard, it has a limit of upto 256 mb of shared memory,it also has ATi Radeon X 1250 Onboard Graphics and 1 Pci-E X16 slot, 2 Pci-E and 1Pci slot. Do i have a limit of how big Pci-E Graphic Card I can get?Like can I get an 512 mb/768mb/1 gb graphic card or something? Plese tell !!!
A: No, the 256mb limit applies only to the integrated video adapter. Any card occupying the PCI-E or PCI slots operates entirely independently. Pop a 512mb Geforce 8800GT into the PCI-E x16 slot and that card has all 512mb available to load textures :) Not that shared memory is a good thing anyway- cannibalizing system RAM to make up for lack of onboard memory is a vile technology . The feature is incompatible with many games- fortunately it's only found on integrated video and very low-end cards.