Slow netbook - can you allocate shared VRAM on a Brazos/Windows 7 system manually?

[meerkat]

Hexus,

please enlighten me. I stopped messing with PC hardware when I had to work with them, and now I know nothing about anything.

A friend has a neat little netbook - Asus eeepc 1015bx, but could never make it work properly. Too slow. Gave it to me to 'sort'. The problem is it has 1GB RAM (in 2012), and no upgrade slot (again, in 2012). Runs Win7 starter.

Now it's a Brazos system - C30. Decent little CPU actually. But it turns out it's allocating ~350MB of it's 1GB RAM to the GPU by default, and as a result is disk swapping like crazy. It crawls along, even in the simplest tasks.

It's got a 1024x800 screen. What business has it sharing 350MB of ram in the first place, and how on Earth do I override it? There's nothing in the BIOS, or in the AMD control panel app? I figure it needs 64MB at most!

I had a look into Brazos tweaker, but that seemed to be a clock/voltage thing only. Google is not really helping me either...

Suggestions?

[blueball]

Was going to suggest swapping the 1Gb for a 2Gb module but I see from their web page the memory is soldered on and there is no SO-DIMM socket.

[watercooled]

You could see if a BIOS update enables the option to change the VRAM allocation: http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_PC/Eee_PC_1015BX/#download
It don't see anything relevant listed, but you sometimes get unlisted updates anyway. Just be very sure to pick the right one if you try it, or you risk bricking the device.
Other than that, it's probably down to software tweaking/another OS. 650MB is a silly amount of memory for a Win7 system.

[meerkat]

Cheers guys; so nothing simple then. To be honest I also had a quick look at the BIOS changelog ... I suppose it's worth a try, anyway.

Had a response from Asus support, who tell me you can't override the setting manually. Seems like a retrograde step, I always remember having this control in older systems with shared VRAM.

Are there any other custom softwares I should be looking into?

You're right - 650MB isn't workable. It's odd that Asus would sell such a machine, it was never going to work in this configuration. I think we're past warranty or 'not fit for purpose' returns. Oh well!

[watercooled]

You could try Linux if the owner would be comfortable with it, and if stuff like batteries etc are recognised. Even so, the likes of Unity would probably still struggle that amount of RAM so you'd probably have to try some of the more frugal distros.

It is poor on Asus' part to ship such a device, especially considering it's not upgradeable. Without meaning to go off on a rant, this is the sort of thing that hurts AMD's reputation; people will likely associate the poor performance with the AMD CPU the sticker advertises. I know the same is true of many Atom systems but at least they clearly differentiate between Atom and Core.

You could also potentially try XP, but fully updated (which is crucial obviously) it's probably not much better than 7.