How do I allocate more RAM my video card?

[gavin_rainer]

I've got a LG P1 Express Dual (LG P1-527A) notebook with onboard video.
I'd like to allocate more RAM to my video card (945GM) but I can't find any option within the BIOS or in Windows XP.
Does anybody know whether this is possible?
I understand that memory management is done automatically, but surely there's a way I can instruct Windows to use all 128 mb of RAM...
Thanks

Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator Driver for Mobile Report

Driver Version: 6.14.10.4704
Operating System: Windows XP* Professional, Service Pack 2 (5.1.2600)
DirectX* Version: 9.0
Physical Memory: 502 MB
Minimum Graphics Memory: 8 MB
Maximum Graphics Memory: 128 MB
Graphics Memory in Use: 32 MB
Processor: x86 family 6 Model 14 Stepping 8
Processor Speed: 1662 MHZ
Vendor ID: 8086
Device ID: 27A2
Device Revision: 03

* Accelerator Information *

Accelerator in Use: Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family
Video BIOS: 1256
Current Graphics Mode: 1280 by 800 True Color (60 Hz)

[Greg]

That setting is controlled either by the software driver or the hardware itself and it cannot be altered. However, you really don't need to worry; if more RAM is needed (almost always because of gaming) it will get it as needed.

[gavin_rainer]

Thanks for your reply. The reason why I wanted to have some control over the memory allocation is because when I play DVDs on my notebook, the video quality is very average.

My desktop PC also has a shared video card and DVDs played poorly on my desktop as well, but when I allocated more RAM to the video card (increased from 32 mb to 128 mb) the picture quality was perfect. That's why I wanted to do the same on my LG notebook.

I'm using PowerDVD 6.0 to play DVDs, but I've also tried WinDVD, Windows Media Player and VideoLAN but they all produce average picture quality (espescially when viewing in full screen).

[Greg]

As a test, do you have any video games that can run in non-fullscreen mode? If so, try having the game run in the background to force the card to use more RAM...then 'pause' the game (to free up GPU resources but the RAM should still be the same) and check the video quality.

I'm not too sure if you'll get a difference, but it's worth a shot to see if re-allocing the memory would indeed help. There are, after all, several other factors that could help/hinder the movie quality (codecs used, the screen type and how well it was manufactured, if you aren't using the native resolution of the screen, etc, etc).

[gavin_rainer]

As a test, do you have any video games that can run in non-fullscreen mode? If so, try having the game run in the background to force the card to use more RAM...then 'pause' the game (to free up GPU resources but the RAM should still be the same) and check the video quality.

I loaded 'Call of Duty' onto my PC and ran it in non-fullscreen mode. The system allocated 96 megabytes of RAM to the graphics card. I tested a few DVDs and the picture quality improved substantially!

So, I guess the amount of RAM that is allocated to the graphics card does any an impact on the playback of DVDs. I suppose there's no much I can do about this issue - my next laptop will definitely have a dedicated graphics card. heh.