PCI-E Cards with hypermemory???

[parkie]

I want to get a run of the mill PCI-E card for my second puter, I won't be playing games or anything of that nature in fact I only use it for encoding and music making. My question is: do these hypermemory cards use system memory automatically or is it something you can switch off? I've been looking at these budget PCI-E cards but I don't want a card thats going to use more system memory than a normal card, should I steer clear of these turbo cache/hypermemory cards and get something different? It has to be silent though which is why I'm looking at these cheaper cards. I've seen a x300SE with 128/256, does that mean it has 128 on board but can use up to 256 including system memory? Does the hypermemory thing only kick in when a application needs it? Would it happen if I was using a music sequencer or sampler?

hope you understand what I mean

p

 

[parkie]

I don't know if it only kicks in once you're doing something that's going to use it, but I know that turbocache cards perform a great deal worse than cards with their own dedicted memory.

Sorry I can't answer your main question

As I only need 2D, performance isn't an issue, it's the amount of system RAM used whilst using my music software that I'm concerned about. I don't want my graphics card eating into my already stretched resources!!

p