Changing Intel HD Graphics VRAM (X201)

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Passa
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Changing Intel HD Graphics VRAM (X201)

#1 Post by Passa » Thu Nov 18, 2010 6:35 am

Hi guys,

Setting up my X201 - I have 4GB of RAM and the Intel HD Graphics chip is taking 192mb currently for shared VRAM. I can't find any option in the BIOS to change this number - how do I allocate a greater amount of memory to the integrated graphics processor?
Lenovo ThinkPad X201 // i5-520M // 8GB RAM // Samsung 830 256GB SSD // 9-cell battery // Windows 8.1 Pro

jdrou
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Re: Changing Intel HD Graphics VRAM (X201)

#2 Post by jdrou » Thu Nov 18, 2010 4:53 pm

What OS are you running? What program are you using to check the graphics memory? On my X201 with Windows 7 it will use up to 1.7GB for graphics but Windows XP will only use 128MB. Note the graphics memory is supposedly dynamically allocated so some software may only see the 'current' usage rather than the max available.
Current Thinkpads:
X31, X40, X61T, X61, X201, X220 (i7 IPS), W520 (2720QM/2000M/FHD), T440p (i7-4800MQ/GF730GT/FHD)
Dells: Latitude C840, Precision M70, Precision M4400, M6400 (WUXGA), M6600, M6700
Daily driver: Dell XPS 13 w/Kaby Lake+Iris Pro+TB3

ThinkRob
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Re: Changing Intel HD Graphics VRAM (X201)

#3 Post by ThinkRob » Sat Nov 20, 2010 11:28 pm

With Intel GPUs, it's up to the drivers to allocate memory for the driver's use. Not sure how you can change it with the Windows drivers -- I'm pretty sure you can -- but it's definitely a driver-level thing.
Need help with Linux or FreeBSD? Catch me on IRC: I'm ThinkRob on FreeNode and EFnet.

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