Have you ever encountered a situation in which you just keep getting error messages while running a game like the one below.
“Your Computer does not meet the Minimum System Requirements to run this software. Your Video Card does not meet the required specifications(GPU:VRAM 1GB)”.
This is because your graphics card doesn’t have enough video memory to render these complex images and data.
In this article, I’ll go through all the methods which you can apply to increase your dedicated VRAM.
- 1 What is VRAM?
- 2 How to Check VRAM?
- 3 How to Increase VRAM?
- 3.1 METHOD 1 – Increasing VRAM with Regedit.
- 3.2 METHOD 2 – Increasing VRAM with System Settings via Control Panel.
- 3.3 METHOD 3 – Increasing VRAM with BIOS.
- 3.4 METHOD 4 – Increasing the VRAM of integrated Intel graphics Card by upgrading your Sytem RAM.
- 3.5 METHOD 5 – Increasing the VRAM of dedicated NVIDIA or AMD Cards by upgrading your computer or buying an eGPU.
- 4 How much dedicated VRAM do you need? (2GB, 4GB, 6GB or 8GB)
- 5 CONCLUSION
What is VRAM?
VRAM or Video Random Access Memory is a set of specialized memory that stores all the graphics related information and data like images which are displayed on the computer.
Every graphics card has some VRAM associated with it.
VRAM is also known as Frame Buffer because it acts as a middleman or buffer between the CPU and GPU.
When a picture is to be displayed on the computer screen, the image data is first read by the CPU. The image data is then stored on the VRAM. This data is then converted to Analog signal via Analog-to-Digital converter like VGA and HDMI cable. This signal is finally sent to the display where we see the final image on the Screen.
How to Check VRAM?
Before you go all in on increasing the VRAM for your integrated Intel graphics card or dedicated AMD or Nvidia graphics card, you must check your current VRAM value.
Follow the steps below to check your VRAM value.
Step 1 – Right Click on the Home Screen of your computer and Select Display Settings.
Step 2 – A new ‘System Settings‘ Window will open. On the left side, make sure you select ‘Display‘. Next, on the right side, click on ‘Advanced Display Settings‘.
Step 3 – A new ‘Advanced Display Settings’ window will open. Scroll down below and click on ‘Display adapter properties‘.
Step 4 – Now you will see all the memory information for your Integrated Intel Graphics Card and Dedicated AMD or NVIDIA Graphics card.
Your VRAM value is the ‘Dedicated Video Memory‘.
As you can see from the picture above, my VRAM is 128 MB, and the adapter type is Intel HD Graphics.
If you have a dedicated graphics card like Nvidia, then your Adapter Type will show NVIDIA Graphics Adapter. In such a case, your NVIDIA VRAM will be included in the Dedicated Video Memory.
How to Increase VRAM?
I’ll be sharing with you five methods to increase the video memory(VRAM) for integrated Intel graphics cards and dedicated NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards.
First two methods involve memory allocation without using BIOS. This will fake an increase in VRAM because the unused memory will now be shared by your graphics card.
Second method has some complexity because you will increase VRAM by allocating memory with BIOS. This also increases VRAM, but if not done properly may lead to technical failures.
Final two methods involve spending some money and increasing your VRAM by buying additional RAMs and new Graphics Card.
So, without further ado, here are the five methods to increase VRAM for your laptop.
METHOD 1 – Increasing VRAM with Regedit.
Regedit or Registry editor can be used to fake an increase in VRAM by allocating some unused memory to the graphics card.
This method works for integrated Intel HD Graphics Card and AMD Ryzen APUs. This doesn’t work for dedicated NVIDIA and AMD Radeon Graphics cards.
Follow the steps to increase dedicated video memory through regedit.
Step 1 – Press ‘ Windows key + R key ‘ to open the ‘RUN‘ window. Next type in regedit and click OK.
Step 2 – This will open the Registry Editor. Inside Registry editor, click on the small arrow on left side of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Step 3 – Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, click on the small arrow on left side of SOFTWARE.
Step 4 – Under SOFTWARE, select Intel.
Step 5 – Right-click on Intel folder, then click on New and then click on Key.
Step 6 – A new key will be created under Intel folder New Key #1.
Step 7 – Rename New Key #1 to GMM.
Step 8 – Once the GMM key is created, right-click on any white space in the right-hand side of the GMM folder. Select New and then click on DWORD (32-bit) Value.
Step 9 – A new DWORD 32-bit value is created New Value #1.
Step 10 – Rename New Value #1 to DedicatedSegmentSize. Make sure you capitalize first letter of each word and write them together without any spaces.
Step 11 – Right Click on DedicatedSegmentSize and then click on Modify.
Step 12 – A new Edit DWORD (32-bit) Value window will open. Select Base as Hexadecimal. Now, enter the Value data using the table below and click OK.
|System RAM||Recommended VRAM|
|1 GB||128 MB|
|2 GB||256 MB|
|4 GB||512 MB|
|6 GB||1024 MB|
|8 GB||2048 MB|
|16 GB||4096 MB|
I am using 512 as Value Data because I have 4GB RAM in my laptop.
Step 13 – Restart your laptop to add the final changes. After restarting, check your VRAM with the method I shared under ‘How to check VRAM’.
Earlier, my Dedicated Video Memory(VRAM) was 128 MB. Let’s check what is my VRAM now.
As you can see, my new VRAM value is 576 MB.
METHOD 2 – Increasing VRAM with System Settings via Control Panel.
You can increase VRAM of your integrated Intel graphics card by increasing the Paging size of the C Drive of your Hard Disk.
By increasing the paging size of C Drive, you will allow your Windows computer to use some area from your C Drive as additional RAM, thereby increasing your VRAM.
Follow the steps below to use this method for increasing VRAM of your Windows 10 computer.
Step 1 – Go to Control Panel. You can find Control Panel by typing Control Panel in the search box next to the Windows Start Icon.
Step 2 – Inside Control Panel, you will see a lot of settings. Click on System.
Step 3 – Click on Advanced System Settings.
Step 4 – A new System properties window will open. Under Advanced tab, click on the Settings button in the Performance section.
Step 5 – A new Performance Options window will open. First, select the Advanced option on top and then click on the Change button inside the Virtual memory section.
Step 6 – A new Virtual Memory window will open. Inside that, you have to uncheck “Automatically manage Paging file size for all drives” option by clicking on the checkbox.
Step 7 – Select drive as C Drive and then type in the following values in Custom Size field.
Initial size (MB) – 24576 and Maximum Size (MB) – 32768. After this, click on the Set button.
Step 8 – Now, make sure the new Paging File size appears on top as 24576-32768. Next, click on OK button.
Step 9 – You will receive a system notification “The changes you have made require you to restart your computer before they can take effect“. Just click on the OK button.
Step 10 – You will receive a new notification from Performance options. Make sure new Total Paging file size for all drives appears as 24576 MB. If everything’s okay, then click on the Apply button first and then click on the OK button.
Step 11 – Finally you will receive a notification from Microsoft Windows to Restart your computer. Click on Restart Now button and you will see the increase in VRAM after the restart.
METHOD 3 – Increasing VRAM with BIOS.
Increasing your VRAM with BIOS is much more complicated than the other two methods because it works differently for different computer brands.
I don’t recommend the BIOS method, but if you don’t have any other options left then and only then, you should go for this method. Follow the steps below to increase VRAM with BIOS.
Step 1 – Start your computer and when it enters the Boot Screen press the F10 button or the Del button depending on your brand to enter the BIOS.
If you are unable to do it, then contact your computer manufacturer for help. You can also seek help from a computer repair shop.
Step 2 – Once in the BIOS, you should look for Device Configuration or Advanced Chipset Configuration.
In some brands like Lenovo, you have to navigate to Devices and then select Video Setup.
Step 3 – Now, you will see different options for Video Memory Size. Select the video memory size according to the RAM your computer has by following the table below.
|System RAM||Recommended VRAM|
|1 GB||128 MB|
|2 GB||256 MB|
|4 GB||512 MB|
|6 GB||1024 MB|
|8 GB||2048 MB|
|16 GB||4096 MB|
Here is a video that explains how to do it with BIOS. This is for HP and Lenovo computers.
METHOD 4 – Increasing the VRAM of integrated Intel graphics Card by upgrading your Sytem RAM.
This method is applicable only for integrated Intel HD Graphics Chipset and AMD Ryzen APUs.
These integrated graphics chipset from Intel use memory from RAM to render images.
Therefore, increasing your system RAM increases the amount of memory available to the Intel graphics card, thereby increasing the VRAM of your Intel Graphics card. The same goes for integrated AMD Ryzen APUs.
If your computer has additional RAM slots, then you should upgrade your RAM. I recommend a total of 8 GB RAM for medium gaming and other everyday tasks.
However, if you want to future proof your computer then you should get 16 GB RAM.
METHOD 5 – Increasing the VRAM of dedicated NVIDIA or AMD Cards by upgrading your computer or buying an eGPU.
If you want to enjoy gaming, designing games on Unity, or video editing without any lags or other performance issues, then just buy a laptop or desktop with plenty of VRAM.
Computers with the latest and high VRAM Graphic Cards usually come with a high system RAM and very powerful CPU. You don’t have to worry about the specifications but mind you, these computers can cost a lot of money.
Graphics cards have become really powerful nowadays. The latest NVIDIA Graphics card NVIDIA Titan RTX has 24 GB VRAM while the latest AMD graphics card AMD Radeon VII has 16 GB VRAM.
If you compare this with the VRAM of Intel HD graphics card (128 MB), you can figure out why these graphics cards are so powerful.
If you want to increase the VRAM of your desktop GPU then you can buy additional Graphics cards. Some laptops also have additional GPU slots, if your laptop has an additional slot then you can buy a graphics card that supports your motherboard.
You can also buy an external graphics card. You can connect the external GPU(eGPU) to your computer using a Thunderbolt 3 port.
How much dedicated VRAM do you need? (2GB, 4GB, 6GB or 8GB)
A computer with more dedicated VRAM will perform a lot better compared to lower VRAM ones.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 with 8GB DDR6 VRAM is better than NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 with 6GB DDR6 VRAM.
Also, a Graphics card with equal VRAM but a higher DDR version will perform better than lower DDR ones.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super with 6GB DDR6 VRAM will perform better compared to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti with 6GB DDR5 VRAM.
If you’re a heavy gamer and make your living from Streaming games, then you should go for at least 6 GB VRAM.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 should do the job for you. You will need enough system RAM too for streaming and gaming.
If you’re a designer and use resource-intensive softwares like Unity 3D, Autodesk Maya, 3DS Max Blender, then you need around 8 GB VRAM.
A good fit for you would be NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super.
If you are more into video editing and a medium gamer, then 4 GB VRAM should be more than enough.
A perfect graphics card for you would be NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super.
For light gamers and casual users, 2GB VRAM is enough.
You can increase the VRAM of your Integrated Intel or AMD Ryzen Graphics Card by the regedit or System Settings method more easily compared to the BIOS method.
I recommend my readers to follow the regedit method. Upgrading your RAM will also increase the VRAM of these integrated Graphics cards.
If you want to increase the VRAM of your dedicated NVIDIA or AMD Graphics card, then you have to either buy a new Graphics card if you have an extra slot or else you have to buy a new computer with higher VRAM according to your need and budget.