HyperMemory™ is ATI’s innovative technology that enables a reduction in the amount of on-board memory on a graphics card without compromising its overall performance. This is a big improvement over previous methods of implementing shared memory between the main system memory and the graphics controller. Graphics applications now utilize the PCI-Express bus to share system memory and use fast on-board memory for real-time processing between the graphics card and the computer’s memory.
This video card uses 32 MB physical memory on-board, and then utilizes the system memory for the remaining 96 MB via the PCI-Express bus and the Hypermemory process.
Shared Memory Implementation
The pictures below demonstrate the difference in how shared memory is implemented in older graphics adapters, and how it has changed with the arrival of ATI's HyperMemory™ technology. (Click on a picture to see a larger image of the diagram.)