PC memory question.

[Balmoral Green]

BG Junior has got a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop, and when purchased, and according to all the technical blurbs, it has 512 MB RAM.

Now for weeks on end he's been pestering me to get him 'World of Warcraft', and this afternoon we bought it, looking on the back of the box, it says min RAM 512. Well that's OK, because the PC has that.

But, on loading the game, it says the system has less than the minimum requirement. So I pull up the basic system information window, and it says it has 488 MB RAM.

1. I can load the game anyway, is this going to be OK, what is likely to happen?

2. I bought this laptop in December, allegedly with 512, but its actually 488. Not exactly as described under the Sale of goods act is it?

[jimmyjimjim]

1). It'll run slower than you'd think possible. Probably.
2). Shared memory for graphics; sounds like some of the 512 Mb is being used for the on board graphics. Common on older/cheaper laptops.

Edited by jimmyjimjim on Sunday 25th February 15:48

[Balmoral Green]

Thanks Jim.

I'll just load it and see how he goes with it.

[eyebeebe]

It's only using 24mb of ram for the graphics (512-488)? Are the graphics actually moving? I'm surprised that such a resource hungry program is able to function graphically with so little video memory!

[jimmyjimjim]

Me too! I've been waiting for the outraged comments on how bad it is...but nothing yet...

[ThePassenger]

jimmyjimjim said:

Me too! I've been waiting for the outraged comments on how bad it is...but nothing yet...

1024x768 res at minimum settings... should be able to pull it off... just.

[Balmoral Green]

Well, we loaded it up anyway, expecting it not to work, freeze up, or be cack slow, but BG junior has been playing it for four days now, and its just fine.