Want to increase video RAM on integrated amd card from 2gb to 4gb

[pinky33]

I have this computer. I went into bios and the max vram I can share is 2GB. I would love to make this 4GB. Any idea if there is a workaround for this? I wonder if another laptop would allow it. From a little research it seems the 780 graphics would increase in performance a noticeable amount if this is possible.

Thank you.

 

[Woomack]

I can be wrong, but I haven't found any other way if the BIOS is locked at a lower value. I would ask Lenovo about it, but I can only tell you that the same APU on Minisforum motherboards can go up to 16GB, so it's possible ... as long as the BIOS supports it.
The 780M is good enough to run most AAA titles at 1080p and some at mid/high details. It may still use 6-8GB, so I know why you wish to have more VRAM.
It could be worse, as business laptops with Intel CPUs have it limited below 1GB. Actually, I have to ask DELL about it on my new laptop as there is only 256MB I don't think I will need more as I won't play on this laptop, and if I wish to, then I can connect eGPU via Thunderbolt. It's still weird to be limited so much.

Edit:
It seems I wasn't looking far enough. Here is one of the videos with a guide on how to force it in Windows. It's maybe for an Intel GPU, but it should work the same for AMD:

Here is the AMD version. It's almost the same.

 

[Woomack]

Now I wonder if you can't run something or if you only don't have the option for a higher VRAM in BIOS. I recommend running something at 4k/8k (Superposition benchmark has 8k test that uses ~6.5GB RAM) and checking in GPU-Z how much VRAM is in use. I see that on my laptop, I have 128MB of dedicated graphics memory, but it uses up to 7.9GB in benchmarks.

 

[pinky33]

Thanks for the links. Tried it out and it did not work. I will try to reach out to Lenovo. Seems so so weird Lenovo would not enable more options as its free performance for them. Sell product better.

 

[MisterEd]

I have an ASUS laptop that came with 16GB RAM. I don't remember how much share GPU RAM there was.
After I upgraded to 32GB RAM then the shared RAM for the GPU increased to 15.6GB.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 6800H
RAM: 32GB

GPU 0: Nvidia RTX 3060 Laptop
Dedicate memory: 6GB
Shared GPU memory: 15.6 GB
Total GPU memory: 21.6 GB

GPU 1: AMD Radian 680M
Dedicate memory: 512 MB
Shared GPU memory: 15.6 GB
Total GPU memory: 16.1 GB

 

[Woomack]

On my Dell laptop, it still shows dedicated memory 128MB, but it actually uses around 8GB in tests.

 

[EarthDog]

On my Dell laptop, it still shows dedicated memory 128MB, but it actually uses around 8GB in tests.

@pinky33 - have you confirmed it doesn't dynamically add what it needs already like Woomack's?

 

[pinky33]

@pinky33 - have you confirmed it doesn't dynamically add what it needs already like Woomack's?

Yes. Ran 3d mark demo before and after. 100 points lower after change. So no real change. Will check usage too next time I benchmark.

Thank you

 

[Woomack]

Run something that requires a lot of VRAM and keep GPU-Z open on the side. Maybe it already uses more than 4GB and you don't even know about it.
Superposition 8k benchmark uses 6GB memory. I don't know what else is free and uses more. 3DMark 4k+ uses 7GB+, but is available in the paid version. If you have one, then change custom settings for more demanding benchmarks and check how much it uses.

 

[Woomack]

Here is 3DMark Time Spy Extreme at 8K and max everything, on my laptop with 128MB VRAM. Dynamic video memory is at least up to 8GB. AIDA64 and GPU-Z report about the same.
In the middle of the test is 7619MB of video memory in use and 17GB of RAM. I haven't seen any performance drops, but this IGP is slow and I get 2-3 FPS, so it would be hard to see it anyway
Standard Time Spy test without any changes shows ~1.2GB memory in use, so it's not the best.




Laptops can have limited or shared TDP for CPU and graphics. It may lower the performance. I know it was the problem when I was testing the Minisforum micro PC with Ryzen 6800u and 680M (it's not much different than the 780M). The solution was to set a higher TDP, as the CPU was up to ~30W and the GPU was up to ~30W with a standard TDP 56W. The graphics was going randomly down to 15W when the CPU was under a higher load. Once the TDP was higher, there was no problem ... but it may raise the temps or make the laptop louder.
TDP and all other values should be listed in hwinfo64.