I wanted to know if it was possible to share my ram with my video card?

yes, when u start your pc go into BIOS and then look for Graphics Apertexture(sp?) Cache, and select how much memory you want to share, I think the max you can share is half of your total Ram.

I went into the BIOS and I think found what I was looking for and did what you asked but it does not seem to work. I have American Trends BIOS 2000 and a ATI 8MB video card.

lol, 8mb

anyways is it a onboard video card or like a pci one? if its onboard I think the method I said is just for added on PCI/AGP cards.

OK, misleading information given here.

If you have onboard video, then you should be able to change the amount of shared RAM used by the video function as described.

If you have an add-in display card, then the system RAM CANNOT be shared! In fact, if you have an add-in card then the Shared RAM function should be disabled, or set to the lowest amount possible if there is no option to disable it.

You can specify the AGP Aperture size though, which is the amount of system RAM that can be used should the video card run out of its own memory. Should this occur though, it will result in a noticable performance drop (since video card memory is a LOT faster).

Thanks for your help!

It's late, so excuse me for being inept!! I thought the apature couldn't exeed the RAM on the Video Card, or it could only be half the VC RAM. I can't remember off-hand and don't feel like looking it up to re-assure myself!!!

The AGP aperture size should only be set to a maximum of 128Mb in most situations.

Agreed, Coconut Monkey.

AGP aperture size is an older setting which doesn't have much relevence nowadays. It's a carry-over from the time when graphics cards only had a few megabytes of video RAM on them, and needed to use system RAM to calulate textures and such. With even lesser and older video cards having 64Mb or more of Video RAM on them, the 'AGP aperture' isn't really needed.

If a game really does need to access and use system RAM (which as you say is much slower and would be detrimental on performance) then perhaps the card isn't good enough for the game being played. Any half-decent video card suited to gaming now has 128Mb or more of Video RAM on the card, and that should be plenty enough!