Integrated GPU with dedicated non-system RAM?

[Eug]

I was perusing my BIOS on my cheap old Windows 10 laptop and was wondering why I couldn't change the BIOS setting for video RAM to anything but 64 MB. This is a Pentium SU4100, so uber old, but I am still using it and I was thinking having more video memory might come in handy when I plug in a large monitor. I have 4 GB RAM installed in the machine.

However, I've just read that this integrated GPU has 64 MB dedicated to it, not shared, using non-system RAM.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...imeline-tweaks-2.419117/page-113#post-6050680

Is this true? If true, that comes as a bit of a surprise to me. How common is this for an integrated GPU?

BTW, I assume I will still be able to use additional RAM as needed. Is that correct? According to the display properties, it has 64 MB dedicated video memory and 0 system video memory, but total avaialble graphics memory of 1695 MB, which includes 1631 shared system memory.

In that case on my other low end machine I have allocated 128 MB video RAM, but currently I'm just using a 1366x768 monitor (no gaming). I'm thinking I may as well just reduce that one back down to 64 MB video RAM, since it's a bit short on system RAM, and I figure every little bit helps.

 

[TheELF]

It's still system ram but the bios dedicates it to the GPU so it is lost to the system pool.
And yes it does take shared memory when it needs it.

 

[Eug]

It's still system ram but the bios dedicates it to the GPU so it is lost to the system pool.
And yes it does take shared memory when it needs it.

Ah, so that post is wrong then? I figured as much, but he states it's not system RAM.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The AMD 780G/GX chipset supported "sideport memory" - a connection to a small dedicated, soldered-on memory. I think it was only 16- or 32-bit wide, though, so it sometimes was slower than the 128-bit system RAM pool. The advantage, is that screen refreshes,wouldn't take system DRAM bandwidth.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

It will be interesting to see if we ever get an APU from AMD that uses HBM memory for its GPU to alleviate the bandwidth bottlenecking that holds them back so badly.

 

[Eug]

The AMD 780G/GX chipset supported "sideport memory" - a connection to a small dedicated, soldered-on memory. I think it was only 16- or 32-bit wide, though, so it sometimes was slower than the 128-bit system RAM pool. The advantage, is that screen refreshes,wouldn't take system DRAM bandwidth.

Chip is a Pentium SU4100 which I believe uses the G45 chipset.