How do I increase my Vram?

jnos400 · 08 Jun 2014

Hi, I was reading online and can't seem to find any good answers so I was curious if there was anyway to increase my Vram, as you can see in the picture at the bottom my graphics card has a total of about 2.2 GB in ram but I can only use 512 MB of it which I don't understand and is fairly frustrating considering this is the pc I typically game on and the graphics card was a little expensive, not to mention the fact that I can't run total war rome 2 which I payed $60 for a while back, so can anyone help me with this? All help is appreciated thank you!

logicearth · 09 Jun 2014

You need to buy a new graphics card if you want more VRAM.

jnos400 · 09 Jun 2014

But even if I do buy a new graphics card I can only purchase half height (low profile) ones and the max those go up to is 2 GB so would it even make a difference if I bought a new one?

Kari · 09 Jun 2014

Hi Jnos400, welcome to the Seven Forums.

The answer is exactly what Logicearth told you above. Your GPU card has only 512 MB, not 2.2 GB as you thought. Of that 2.2 GB, 1,757 MB is shared memory, meaning the GPU is allowed to use that amount of your system RAM, "borrow" it if needed when its own 512 MB is not enough.

A game needing a lot of RAM itself does not always leave as much available RAM to "borrow" to the GPU as would be needed. In your case, you have 4 GB RAM, 512 MB GPU and not too fast processor so you fulfill the absolute minimum specs to run Total War Rome 2 (Rome II Recommended Specs - Total War Wiki), but a GPU with 1 GB dedicated memory and better processor are recommended.

Notice also that comparing your CPU and GPU, if you could get the game running it would be a bit slower than when no shared memory is used; your shared RAM cannot handle gfx instructions as fast as the dedicated GPU memory so when shared would be used, the processing would be slowed down.

Kari

jnos400 · 09 Jun 2014

I want a new graphics card but again I can't find any half heights over 2 GB anywhere, although thank you for the help you did a really good job of explaining it to me.

Sergeant Steve · 09 Jun 2014

A graphics card with 2Gb of Dedicated VRAM is 4 times what you have now, I'm pretty darn sure that you won't need more dedicated video memory than that unless you're planning on playing games on Ultra Settings in 4k, and for that you would need a whole new computer.

paulpicks21 · 09 Jun 2014

You need to be careful though, some of the most budget graphics cards come with 2GB of Vram now a days, I should know, I bought one for my lounge PC, it was only like £30 but I knew it would not run games. I got it for the HDMI out so I could stream stuff to my TV.
Just because a card has 2GB of Vram does not necessarily mean it will run games well. As usual in life, the more the pay the better you get. But I would imagine if your PC can only hold slim graphics cards then the PSU will be a slimline one too and maybe only 200-300 watts which will massively limit what card you can upgrade to.

NoN · 10 Jun 2014

Note also that if you're changing your graphics hardware, you'll have to reactivate your Windows copy by online service or by phone if it came as a pre-installed OS.

AddRAM · 11 Jun 2014

I just put this one in my new HP Compaq Pro 6300 SFF. It works just fine. Although, the Intel HD 2600 on the cpu got a better score.

MSI N610GT-MD2GD3/LP GeForce GT 610 2GB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card - Newegg.com