Question More RAM - any difference if you are playing with integrated graphics?

Perene

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Oct 12, 2014
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There are videos on the internet showing that using the onboard video from a recent CPU such as i5 11400 may work for the lowest res. possible like 720p (still, I wonder if even in such scenarios the GPU use is close to 100%), however it was hinted that we need at least 16 GB of RAM. I believe I saw a few videos in which depending on the game and situation the use of system RAM was high.

Since everyone has 16 GB of RAM these days I need to ask if putting more RAM will make any difference if you are playing with the onboard video from a CPU like i5 11400.

I mean, 24 GB or 32 GB of RAM would be overkill and not worth the trouble?
 

aigomorla

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I haven't really played with integrated gfx in a while, but i believe they had a feature in bios which allowed you to manually allocate and set a portion of your system memory and dedicated it to the igp.

However if i recall it was limited to max 2gb...

In that case, then yes, if your running a low ram, it would help if you were running 8GB as you automatically lose 2gb and gives you an overall 6GB.
But at 16GB, im not too sure if your system would be impacted at all running 14gbs vs 16gbs, where as you might see a ram shortage on 8 vs 6.
 

Perene

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Oct 12, 2014
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I haven't really played with integrated gfx in a while, but i believe they had a feature in bios which allowed you to manually allocate and set a portion of your system memory and dedicated it to the igp.

However if i recall it was limited to max 2gb...

In that case, then yes, if your running a low ram, it would help if you were running 8GB as you automatically lose 2gb and gives you an overall 6GB.
But at 16GB, im not too sure if your system would be impacted at all running 14gbs vs 16gbs, where as you might see a ram shortage on 8 vs 6.
The i5 11400 can use 64 GB of RAM (max = 128) for the iGPU.


I don't think it's possible to play anything with 8 GB. So 16 GB would be the minimum config to try. This uploader says it would be a complete disaster:

GTA V in this video apparently is using 50% of more from the total RAM (16 GB). So it would make sense to put even more RAM, I am assuming.
 

aigomorla

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You can see at the end of the video the game uses way more then 8GB even.
You would be ram limited even if you only had 8GB and dedicated 0 ram to the IGP.

If you had 16GB like the video shows, and dedicated 2GB of VRAM to the IGP, you would be OK with the game as the game rarely dipped 2GB VRAM.
But GTA5 required a PEAK of 11GB near the end.

So i stand by my statement.

Oh the higher resolution you go, the MORE VRAM required BTW.
So the video was done on 720, on 1080, the game would require more VRAM... and @ 1440p you would probably melt your CPU.

No seriously, on 1440p the game would still be utterly unplayable even if you gave it 1 million GB of VRAM, because the IGP would not be able to process all that data fast enough to begin with.
 

Perene

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Oct 12, 2014
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You can see at the end of the video the game uses way more then 8GB even.
You would be ram limited even if you only had 8GB and dedicated 0 ram to the IGP.

If you had 16GB like the video shows, and dedicated 2GB of VRAM to the IGP, you would be OK with the game as the game rarely dipped 2GB VRAM.
But GTA5 required a PEAK of 11GB near the end.

So i stand by my statement.

Oh the higher resolution you go, the MORE VRAM required BTW.
So the video was done on 720, on 1080, the game would require more VRAM... and @ 1440p you would probably melt your CPU.

No seriously, on 1440p the game would still be utterly unplayable even if you gave it 1 million GB of VRAM, because the IGP would not be able to process all that data fast enough to begin with.
One question, is it my imagination or the unplayable thing could happen even with 720p if I try with this monitor?


I wonder if using a 1080p monitor would make any difference in this scenario.
 

aigomorla

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Thats a 4k monitor...
i can tell you first hand it will down scale horribly @ 720p.
Even at 1080p it might have poor downscaling.

It will probably scale OK @ 1440p.

you will get the frame rates, but it will just look so bad, you'll probably even consider scalpers prices for a 3060 or a 6600XT.
And if you want to run that monitor at full 4k, you will NEED at least a 3070 or higher. which translates to a 6700XT or higher on AMD.
 
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