Last year, when my Sony laptop began to go on the fritz, I decided to go all out and buy a fairly decent system. I went with Dell since the company I work for uses Dells exclusively (although, the GX270 motherboard meltdown issue should have been my first tip off that I was about to make a bad decision).
One thing I wanted to make sure of was when I purchased this system was that it had a decent video card. Sure, I purchased “budget” systems in the past with a no-name graphics card that was impossible to find drivers for and worked with 2% of the games I purchased. So, I spent an extra $100 on the “ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory” card. Ooooh, “hypermemory”… that must mean it is super fast. At the time I purchased the system, there were no footnotes noting that “hypermemory” was really just a cheap marketing gimmick that allows Dell to rip off its consumers. Since the system I was purchasing was over $2000, I was hoping Dell would at least show an ounce of respect for me as a customer. I must have been on acid that day.
I got my system and was pretty happy with my purchase. (Of course, this was after I clicked past all of these great pop-ups for QuickBooks, AOL, Dell PhotoStudio Special Edition, Music Match, McAffee and MyWay search bar. And, golly, Dell was also nice enough to preload these programs for me!) My video card worked great for all of the PC games I purchased. I thought to myself, “wow… 256MB of video memory sure makes a difference”.
The sad realization came when I recently upgraded my computer to Vista. What’s this? My graphics card only shows 128MB of RAM now?! Surely this must be some kind of glitch. A quick Google search finally brought me the truth: Hypermemory is really just memory taken from the system RAM. The video card really only had 128MB of RAM. Another 128MB is supposed to be pulled from the system RAM, however, the Vista ATI drivers apparently do not allow for such idiotic behavior. And, of course, I’m outside my warranty period so Dell won’t even speak to me (unless I give them even more money). Also, I’ve see 0% effort on a new driver for the X600.
Now, Dell, if I wanted a 128MB video card, I would have selected a video card that stated 128MB of RAM. I selected 256MB of RAM. Heck, why not tell me that the computer also has 10 GB of memory… I mean, you could use 9GB of hard drive space and 1 GB of real memory. That equals 10, right? And I supposed that I’m the idiot because I did not take the time to research what Hypermemory was. Next time I make a purchase from Dell, I guess I’ll have to Google the phrase “1,001 ways Dell can rip you off”.
P.S. I reached out to ATI, asking if there was some sort of driver update in the works for Hypermemory. Another effort made in vain:
Question:
I have a Radeon X600 with 256MB of “HyperMemory”. The driver is supposed to take system RAM and dedicate it as additional graphics card memory. While the driver in XP emulated this correctly, the Vista driver apparently “knows the truth” and states the card is only 128MB.
Despite the fact that I feel duped, I would respectively ask that you please correct your driver so consumers can utilize 256MB of graphics memory and not the 128MB.
Thank you.
Solution:
There is nothing misleading in our definition of Hypermemory.
http://ati.amd.com/technology/hypermemory.html
We have nothing in our driver that can force Vista to report 256 MB of memory.
Since ATI do not produce a retail version of the X600 (other than the All in Wonder X600) you should contact the actual video card manufacturer for further support with this issue.
Wow… way to pass the buck on that one. Not even a “thank you for your e-mail” or “we apologize for the inconvenience”. Heck, I at least throw in a “have a good week” in my e-mails to people I don’t even like!
