the simple answer is yes, only chip memory could be used for audio and graphics output. audio and video input devices with well written software could DMA into and out of fast ram, and only really need chipram as a "framebuffer" to the custom chips for audio/video out.
for example, octamed soundstudio can use fastram for sound samples, feeding buffers in chipram when required for playback.
The early A1000's had 512k chipram, but half that was lost due to needing to hold the kickstart loaded from disk.
The A500's had 512k chipram, and expanded with 512k "slow" fastram and the kickstart in rom.
The early A500's could only have 1/2Meg chipram, as they had the early revsion agnus chips that could only decode half a meg (rev3/5).
The later A500's could have their 1/2Meg "slow" ram converted to additional chip ram with a trace cut and jumper solder, as they had later agnus chips that could decode 1meg of chipram (rev 6 and up).
The A500plus had 1Mb chipram, and expanded to 2Mb chip ram as they had the 2Mb agnus.
The A600 had 1Mb chipram - expandable to 2meg for the same reason as the A500plus.
The early A2000's came with half meg chip and half meg "slow" fast. later A2000's had 1meg chipram. any further expansion of an A2000 is via 24Bit DMA'able fast ram upto 8Meg, unless an accelerator is involved...
now, as you can see, "true" fast ram is a rare beast amongst the lower end machines, so you only really find audio/video software able to use fastram in the more professional end of the software market. games and demo's for original chipset machines, and enhanced chipset machines A500/A600/A1000/A2000, cannot rely on the existance of fastram, and so only make use of chipram, as this is accessable by the custom chips directly, and processor at the custom chips discretion...
so no. something as simple and slow as a "pageflipping" animation is not limited to the amount of chipram in your system, as the CPU feeds data from fastram into the frambuffer in chipram for the custom chips to display the frame of animation. really in this case, chipram only limits your screen resolution, and colour depth, as to how bigger screen you can open in 0.5Mb/1Mb/2MB of chipram...
mucking about with multiple 24bit layered graphics in photogenics would be unreasonable if you had to keep graphics in just the 2meg of chipram available.
i hope this helps.
