when i play a game what is being loaded into the memory that is in my video card and what is loaded into the system memory?? Andrew Kraker

A video card is often used for the entire rendering process. This is basically the geometric processing (lots of vertex logic), the rasterization (making a pixelated screen image), and the fragmenting (manipulating the raster in macro blocks). The RAM on the graphics card is used for three major things: 1) buffers, queues any geometric data/results. 2) holds textures and product of mapping. 3) holds results of pixel shading. The size of RAM will be important the larger the target resolution. Far more important than GPU RAM is the processing speed of the GPU itself. GPU performance tends to quadruple each generation. If you're GPU RAM doubles every generation, it should keep up with the performance curve. (Assuming you aren't trying to render a Pixar movie). The CPU/main memory combo will work on the AI, domain collisions, application logic, etc. A GPU is horrible at branch logic, so anything "iffy" (the technical term) must be handled by the CPU. What is loaded into main memory are the executable and shared libraries (obviously). Another very important component in main memory is the video subsystem and the very-critical graphics card driver. The above is totally dependent on the game. You could also have your graphics memory shared with main memory (i.e. no graphics card).