Help Contents

About video memory (VRAM) settings

For each virtual machine, you can specify the:

• Screen resolution and color quality (bit depth) for the Microsoft Windows desktop that appears in the virtual machine window. The screen resolution and color quality settings are located in the Windows operating system.
• The amount of video memory (VRAM) that is required to achieve the best balance of screen resolution and bit depth. The VRAM setting is located in Microsoft Virtual PC.

A typical screen resolution setting for an Intel-based computer is 640 x480, 800x 600, or 1024x768 pixels. A typical bit depth setting is 8 bit, 16 bit, or 32 bit. The recommended bit depth setting for a virtual machine is 16 or 32 bits.

If you assign more VRAM to your virtual machine, you can increase the bit depth and still get good screen resolution. For each virtual machine, you can set the amount of VRAM that is needed to produce the best combination of screen resolution and color quality. The VRAM settings in Virtual PC determine the maximum screen resolution and color quality the virtual machine can support. The maximum screen resolution and color quality that a virtual machine can support is determined by the amount of VRAM installed on your Macintosh.

In Virtual PC, you can assign up to 16 MB of VRAM. This is recommended for use with larger, high-end monitors like the Apple 23-inch Cinema Display monitor.

For more information about setting the screen resolution and color quality for the Windows operating system, see the online Help in Windows.

Notes

• Virtual Machine Additions must be installed on the virtual machine in order for it to support the full range of available Macintosh resolutions when the virtual machine is run in full-screen mode.
• When you increase the amount of VRAM that is assigned to one virtual machine, the amount of total memory (RAM) for that virtual machine is affected. This may affect the performance of this and other virtual machines.
• The S3 Trio 32/64 PCI video card is not designed to work with VRAM values greater than 4 MB. Although Virtual Machine Additions add support for higher VRAM values, you may want to consider reducing the VRAM value to 4 MB if you encounter video problems.

See also

About memory usage