OK, I have a conundrum. According to my video card info, I have a Nvidia GE Force 7300LE card, 64 mb. But yet, I run dxdiag, the approx total memory is 825 mb. What the heck is the difference, and why can I run games at 128 mb if indeed my card is only running at 64mb? What can I trust?
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9 Responses to “Video card question”
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December 25th, 2007 at 7:17 am
The GeForce 7500 LE is an OEM card and supports TurboCache. Looks like the TurboCache is throwing DXDiag off a wee bit and giving you false numbers. The TurboCache is boosting the performance of your video card, which is a good thing, but don’t be fooled by DXDiag. Try running better diagnostic software like Astra32 for a more accurate result. Are you looking at upgrading your card, or just curious as to why the DXDiag numbers are so far off?
December 25th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Both…it just seems interesting that I can run a game with 128mb memory on a 64 mb card. Now granted…I also have a pretty decent system (Athlon Duo Core 2.4 Ghz with 2 GB of RAM) could that be taking some of the load off the card? Anyway, yeah, I’m thinking of upgrading to at least a 128 card (256 if I can boot it, 512 is wishful thinking).
December 25th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
First off.. I don’t think they made a 64mb 7300LE (and LE is the L.ight E.dition).. you could be confusing 64 BIT (the cards memory interface’s datapath “width”) with your cards memory size.. the min on that series was 128 megs of video ram, I think.
Second.. like kix mentioned it’s TurboCache “stealing” memory from your computer’s system memory to be used for your video card and dxdiag will report that. It can sometimes slow your games down if you had less than enough system memory to begin with.. depended on the application/game. Taking 256 megs away from 1gig (750meg or so after Windows) would leave only 500megs or so and would cause more slowdown with games than whatever improvement the extra memory “given” to the graphics card would bring. Shouldn’t be the case with 2gigs of system memory BUT (see that’s a big but there) giving a ton of memory, even dedicated onboard video memory, is like fitting a Holly 850 Double Pumper carburetor on a Chevette’s four-banger. Sure it is massive, better carb.. but it won’t matter.
Ok.. maybe the 7300LE=a Corsica not a Chevette
I’m not dissing your card, I just recently bought a couple $30 6200′s (128 bit ones and I unlocked pipelines.. run about like your 7300!) to keep a couple of the older computers going strong for what they are used for.
December 26th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Well, I just remembered yesterday that I still have an ATI Radeon X700 Pro in my old computer (the one where the motherboard short circuited). I’m just gonna yank that out and plug it into this one. Shouldn’t be a problem considering it’s rated at 256 mb. I still have the driver disk and the documentation for it, and have already been to the ATI/AMD website and they have drivers for Vista….so, I have a project for tonight after the kiddies go to bed. Thanks for the input Kix and Scott.
December 26th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
OK, scratch that last one….the old video card is AGP, I have to go with PCI Express. Well, thank goodness for Best Buy gift cards for Christmas.
December 29th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Once you find the card you want.. compare the price of it at Best Buy with the price of it at http://www.newegg.com. You will probably save your gift card for some CD’s or games or movies or something
December 29th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Newegg doesn’t even carry the card I want (BFG Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT OC model #bfgr88512gtoce). Everything I read about the card is good…except for the heating issue, but adjusting the fan speed takes care of the problem.
December 29th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
OK found it…Best Buy is still cheaper.
December 30th, 2007 at 6:22 am
That’s a great card! I would hardly call a 4% overclock much of an overclock though =) There’s a Gigabyte one that has a 17% overclock at 700mhz (from 600 normal) for $36 cheaper (including shipping and $22 tax difference you pay at Best Buy vs none online)
Nvidia forceware menu has OC sliders built into it to achieve the same results.. at least the ones OC’d from the manufacturer are warrantied at the OC level. Not that they would be able to discern you OC’d anyway if something went bad.
Great card though! the 8800 GT is what I would get if I were in the market, for sure!