No video ram on intel hd 4600 graphics

[AYoke]

I just got an hp envy 15t with intel hd graphics, but it dosnt have any vram, is there a way to fix this?

[JEFFREY_F_Intel · Accepted solution]

Intel graphics have Unified Memory Architecture and don't need "dedicated" Vram - they get memory dynamically from the operating system when they need it.

See the following threads:

/thread/56084 https://communities.intel.com/thread/56084

/thread/27082 https://communities.intel.com/thread/27082

/thread/55054 https://communities.intel.com/thread/55054

Unlike where discrete graphics cards local memory on the card is important for performance because of the high latency PCIe link to the system memory, integrated GPU have direct access to the system memory at full speed.

Since there is no performance advantage to "reserve" a lot of system memory for graphics at boot and thus making it unusable for common applications such as Excel, Photoshop, etc., Microsoft requires that Intel graphics dynamically allocates memory system only when needed - without holding a bunch of memory as "dedicated". What Windows is calling dedicated 32MB is actually only a small amount of system memory to graphics drivers reserves at the start of internal bookkeeping.

Games should not be looking at the amount of "dedicated" memory; but they should be checking total memory or shared dynamic. The "mimimum specifications" seen in many games are not very meaningful; they are mostly copy / paste from many years of old habit. Almost all games work perfectly using dynamically allocated memory.

[Kevin_M_Intel]

Rootheday has provided very good information.

Note that the Intel® graphics controllers uses shared memory that is taken from the RAM memory installed on your computer.

The feature that sets the amount of memory that is used for video is called Intel® Dynamic Video Memory Technology and this will make the graphics controller only to use the amount of RAM memory that it requires to run the different applications or software's.

I am afraid to say that there is no way to preset this to a specific value; however, you can limit the maximum memory that it can take only. You will see this option usually in BIOS and you will have 3 options, 128MB, 256MB and maximum DVMT. Other values can be found as 512MB, etc but this depends on the motherboard manufacturer and the amount of RAM memory installed on your computer.

This thread will be moved to the graphics forum support.

Kevin M