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Why is my RAM being analyzed as smaller?

I

Intranquill

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 7, 2011
17
0
I have the EARLY 2011 15 inch MBP with the 6750M card, and it has 1GB of GDDR5 RAM.

I recently ran a Can I Run It analysis on my Mac, on the Windows side, for the game Skyrim, if anyone cares. And it said that my video card memory was at 708MBs, and it recommended I get a 1GB RAM card...but I HAVE one.

What exactly is wrong here? Is the site wrong? Am I stupid?

Also, on a side note, tried running GTA4 on my Mac, and it is AWFUL. Constantly freezes even at completely Low settings. . Yet my friend with an early 2010 iMac can run it fairly well with no hiccups what so ever.

I'm in the dark here, and would love to get out of this slump so I can use my Mac for a little gaming.

Thanks guys for any help or advice.
 
Could just be a glitch or something, wouldn't surprise me. But GTA 4 is a horrible port, don't use its performance as a judge for your computers performance. Battlefield 3 would be one of the best games at the moment to test your Macbook, the best looking game, and optimised wonderfully.
 
A lot of these system scanners seem confused as to what my card is too, I had one read it as 256mb card and another tell me it was an integrated card.

I have updated my drivers on windows to 11.10 beta drivers from AMD which then changes the device to a generic sounds card range name, something like 6000-7000 series.

The best thing I have found to see how games run is to just try demos of similar games or look on youtube for people playing games on the same hardware.

GTA4 is horribly optimised on PC like the guy above said, when it came out even people with top spec desktops could barely run it, it is a massive resource hog and I wouldnt base your laptops performance on that.

I have the same laptop as you and could run the battlefield 3 beta on High without any major problems.
 
Intranquill said:
I have the EARLY 2011 15 inch MBP with the 6750M card, and it has 1GB of GDDR5 RAM.

I recently ran a Can I Run It analysis on my Mac, on the Windows side, for the game Skyrim, if anyone cares. And it said that my video card memory was at 708MBs, and it recommended I get a 1GB RAM card...but I HAVE one.

What exactly is wrong here? Is the site wrong? Am I stupid?

Also, on a side note, tried running GTA4 on my Mac, and it is AWFUL. Constantly freezes even at completely Low settings. . Yet my friend with an early 2010 iMac can run it fairly well with no hiccups what so ever.

I'm in the dark here, and would love to get out of this slump so I can use my Mac for a little gaming.

Thanks guys for any help or advice.
Click to expand...

Your machine has an HD3000 and a dedicated AMD card. The HD3000 can have up to 708MB so I assume that the program is finding your HD3000 card and not your dedicated card. That would also explain the low performance.

Edwin
 
Shadow%20Mac said:
incorrect. Mac OS X can use the discrete card as well. Go to system preferences > energy saver to choose which card to use or to enable automatic switching.
Click to expand...
He was saying that windows doesn't have the graphics switching abilities, which afaik is a true statement. Windows from my experience has always used the 6750m on my 2011 MBP and doesn't recognize the HD3000
 
Shadow%20Mac said:
incorrect. Mac OS X can use the discrete card as well. Go to system preferences > energy saver to choose which card to use or to enable automatic switching.
Click to expand...

Translation: Windows can only run the AMD 6750, and not the Intel HD3000.

Why would you put a discrete card in an Apple laptop so it can only be utilized by Windows?
 
He said "I thought Windows only utilized the discrete card?" not "I thought only Windows"... that is discrete only on the Win side and not integrated.
 
Try run dxdiag and see what it reports.

Can You Run it is flawed and claims my machine has 3840MB VRAM usually.
 
My dxdiag says 707MB, also. Like Edddeduck said, it's probably reading off the HD3000. Catalyst Control Center reports 1024MB of memory, which is the correct amount.
 
deadwulfe said:
My dxdiag says 707MB, also. Like Edddeduck said, it's probably reading off the HD3000. Catalyst Control Center reports 1024MB of memory, which is the correct amount.
Click to expand...

I would think that the operating system (Windows) tells anyone who asks: "There is a HD3000 with 708 MB of RAM, not connected to anything. And there is a 6750M with 1024 MB of RAM, connected to a monitor. ". So it just depends on how clever or stupid the software is that displays the information. Seems "Catalyst Control Center" reads the information and tells you about the card connected to the monitor, while another app just displays the information for the first graphics card, which isn't actually used by anything.
 
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