Graphics ram count towards sytem ram?

[Flamez]

Sometime told me that my graphics card ram counts towards my 3.2 gig total of ram in Windows XP 32 bit. Is this true? I have 2 gigs of ram, and 1 gig on my graphics card. Does this mean if I put another 2 gigs into my computer I'll only get like, 200-400 megs out of them?

Thanks

[Harudath]

Yep, for your system to be able to utilize more you'd need to get Vista methinks

[Mr TRiot]

It all has to go with wether it's a 32 or a 64 bit OS

Link with some decent reading: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=554252

[Thrax]

The OS (Any 32bit OS) can only address 2^32 bits (4,294,967,295) of memory-mapped I/O (MMIO, henceforth). Damn near anything on your computer has an MMIO address; the BIOS, the buses, your VRAM (Which supersedes your DRAM addressing). The computer reserves blocks of MMIO addresses for VRAM, then buses/bridges/BIOS, then DRAM. Your RAM gets all the addressing space left, which is usually 2.5-3.12GB.

And that's that. You need a 64bit OS to get more.