Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Artinnio]

How's it going guys, I need help increasing Dedicated Video RAM. I have 4204MB of total available Graphics memory, but only 768MB of dedicated video RAM. I'd like to increase it to 2GB. How do I increase it?

My rig:
VIDEO CARD: AMD Radeon HD 8570D
Pixel Shader version: 5.0
Vertex Shader version: 5.0
Dedicated Video RAM: 768MB

CPU: AMD A8-6600K APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics

CPU SPEED: 3.9Ghz
RAM: 7.4GB

OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit

My Motherboard is a MSi Military Class 4, in case that helps with the BIOS settings...

If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it

[wierd]

That is controlled by two things, both of which are typically outside the end user's control.


1) The device driver can manage device memory allocation.  EG, AMD's driver allocates so much of the device's memory for texture and geometry data, and allocates the rest for framebuffers.

2) The device's hardware itself will define what address ranges the GPU is physically able to use for framebuffers, vs as local storage for geometry data .


The first will possibly have some wiggle room if you can find alternative drivers that let you fiddle with those settings. (see things like the linux radeon driver, or neuvau(sp?).) The latter is simply a restriction of graphic hardware design, and all you can do is use a different discreet card.

Why do you need that much vram? Are you trying to do some really absurd thing on an epically large framebuffer with bit-blt or something?

[Artinnio]

According to every website and it's cat, I need that much to be able to play more modern games that are coming out, like Layers of Fear etc.
Older games like Skyrim or Portal 2 etc run well, but anything like Watch_dogs doesn't. I figured I should increase the dedicated video RAM

[wierd]

I think you are misunderstanding.


A discrete video card has RAM built into it. That is the dedicated video memory. That memory is only directly addressable by the GPU on that card. The system's CPU is able to put data into and out of that memory through a "window"-- a region of the CPU's address space, through which the video memory can be addressed by moving the window around.

Integrated video hardware, such as intel's integrated video in thier "i-series" processors, uses a block of the system ram as if it were this dedicated memory, but this is the exception.  Since you are using a discrete graphics card, you are limited to getting a new card with more ram built onto it.

What I was discussing earier is that of the memory in the graphics card, some parts of it are used for different things, and how that use is allocated is beyond user ability to manage.

[Artinnio]

Damn, so I need to buy a graphics card? I'm not so good with computers, not gonna lie.
This is what System Requirements Lab says about my video card for the game I want to get:

                            Required   You Have
Pixel Shader version   5.0   5.0
Vertex Shader version   5.0   5.0
Dedicated Video RAM   2 GB   768 MB

[WealthyRadish]

Often the minimum system requirements given simply means that those were the specs of the machine they tested it on. The real requirements can be much lower, or they can be higher in some ways, and the only way to know for sure is to try a demo, or visit the other bay for a "demo". Mods and more advanced engine settings will sometimes be enough to get a game playable as well. Since that is a rather small amount of VRAM, I wouldn't buy any games with high requirements without first testing it.

Also, I'd move the thread to the Life Advice or Other Games board.

[Shadowlord]

Do they not list the minimum video card models required to play the games?

Well, usually if they only list the minimum/recommended video memory, it's because it has increased in certain video card generations, along with the performance capabilities of the cards. So even if you could somehow increase how much RAM yours could access to 2 GB, it would still perform very poorly at those games since they're almost certainly designed for more powerful cards.

Either you have to get a new card, or you just don't play those games. :V
(If you want to be patient, you can also choose to wait a couple years, and the prices of the current cards and games will both come down  )