Hi Asrock (aka "devkit light") owners,

I noticed that my total available memory is 1016 MB. The integrated graphics only use 8 MB (simple math, eh?). I heard that OSX wants more graphic memory for Quartz etc.
In BIOS there is an option for DVMT where the graphic memory should be dynamically adjusted. There is also an "fixed" option with 64 MB and 128 MB. I tried these settings but it seems to be ignored. Total memory stay at 1016 MB. Is there an option to give OSX more graphics memory?

I have a 915 board and the 1st boot screen in darwin shows 8MB. But, it still turns on QE and CI just fine. And in my case I just have DVMT at dynamic... It is definitely using more than 8MB, as OpenGL stuff runs pretty smoothly and all at higher resolutions.

If you have CE and QI showing as on in system profiler, then don't worry about it.

Thanks for the quick reply!

QE and CI is supported and it feels quite smoothly. But the more the better, right? I thought my Xbench values for QE where a bit low compared to what I've seen here, so I investigated in this issue. Maybe you're right and I should relax.

I'm going to check graphics memory in windows though. Maybe the BIOS options are only interpreted by the windows chipset driver?

I think its sort of transparent... I mean, there is no way it is really -only- using 8MB of RAM. I just think they don't have the hooks into the OS to really show this sort of info yet. I mean, this is the only PCI-e graphics in any mac, right? None of the PPC ones have any PCI-e yet.

I got rather low scores with my ASRock (P4 3.0ghz) as well - I returned it for the 915GUXL (needed to be able to use the ADD2 card for DVI out) and my scores jumped 10 points - still sorta low compared to others, but the motherboard does affect it.

Good info to have... I wonder if the DDR400 vs. DDR2-533 bandwidth had anything to do w/it (the video uses the onboard, etc).

check out your ram timings in the bios, they are set ridiculously slow on these asrocks by default.

could you perhaps tell me how to set up the ram timing in bios?
i'm using pc400 ddr ram and don't understand which settings is better at what option etc.

thanks in advance!

There will be settings like RAS and CAS and all in BIOS, making them lower typically speeds up RAM. And you could increase your RAM MHz as well in there. No one can tell you, really, it depends on your BIOS.

I can test the onboard RAM theory soon, I need to run xbench on my GMA950 system once I get it setup again (ddr2 667).