Windows 7 turns off aero

[waynezo]

When I run multiple videos or play a video fullscreen, windows turns off Aero and reverts to basic. It gives me the message there is not enough video memory. I have 2 radeon hd 4770's one for each monitor. Is there a way to stop that?

[amdkt7]

Possibly you will need to add more system memory. I understand that the system uses a portion of system memory to match what is on the video card. You have two cards, so you are using twice the system memory for those two cards (not sure about this).

So how much memory is on the vid cards, and how much ram do you have in your main memory?

[Whir]

What video player are you using? If the output renderer is set to overlay or default, it will revert to non-Aero mode because overlay doesn't support it.

[waynezo]

I have 6GB system memory and 512 on each card. I use VLC player

[Whir]

I'm not familiar with VLC's menu options, but I'm told there should be a way to change the renderer. Try looking in options -> codec.

If you can't find anything, I suggest downloading CCCP and using Media Player Classic instead.

[amdkt7]

Seems that it is not a lack of system memory. Does a different player work?

[VHockey86]

Quote:

Originally Posted by amdkt7

I understand that the system uses a portion of system memory to match what is on the video card. You have two cards, so you are using twice the system memory for those two cards (not sure about this).

Graphics card memory is memory mapped into the global address space (as are other peripherals, like USB devices, sound cards, etc). Thus it consumes a portion of the address space...which if you're running a 32-bit system which is limited to 4GB of addressable memory and you have more than (4GB - size of your graphics card memory) you "lose" part of your system memory, but it does not in general require system memory. On s 64-bit OS this isn't a problem.

Some graphics cards with "shared" memory, typically found in onboard graphics or laptop graphics do not have onboard graphics card memory and instead use the system memory, but this is not typically the case.

I'm using Windows 7 Pro and the latest version of VLC with a nvidia graphics card and the latest 64-bit drivers and I don't notice this issue. I did notice that sometimes when I'm in fullscreen mode other things would steal focus and get "stuck" on top of the video though, which was kind of annoying and didn't seem to occur in XP for me. Did you check your ATI drivers?

[waynezo]

It appears to have been some sort of bug. Now I can run multiple videos with multiple players and aero stays on.