System hogging memory. (shared video)

[Forrest Smith <forrestsmith@midsouth.rr.com>]

Hello All,

  I have noticed spikes and mesas of memory usage reaching mid 90%,
with NO swap usage. In fact after clean boot, and Gnome loaded, 250Megs
used and no swap usage. 

 ? Is this to be expected ?

 One thought I had was that maybe too much memory is being allocated to 
my integrated video card.
 
 ? Is there a way to view / change this value ?

Running Sarge with 2.6.8-1-686

 Thanks, 

Forrest