If your graphics card is integrated, how to allocate more VRAM in Windows?

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If your graphics card is integrated, how to allocate more VRAM in Windows?

allocate, card, graphics, integrated, VRAM, Windows

With the arrival of The Last of Us Part I on PC, many users are beginning to discover errors related to insufficient graphics memory on the computer, something that even in laptops that use integrated graphics had never happened. If this is your case and you are trying to launch a game on your PC or Laptop with integrated graphics the system tells you that you don’t have enough vramin this article, we teach you how to fix the problem.

Despite the fact that not having a dedicated graphics card limits you a lot when it comes to being able to play decent games, many of the integrated graphics are powerful enough to run simple games; The problem is that these graphics cards don’t have dedicated graphics memory and they have to “borrow” it from the system RAM, and since they “take” the bare minimum, it’s not enough for some games. Fortunately, on Windows you can change this setting yourself.

How to find out how much VRAM your integrated graphics card is using

When you get an error while running a game that you don’t have enough memory, the first thing you should do is check how much VRAM Windows is allocating to your onboard graphics card, because it’s usually this is a setting that works automatically. To do this, go to Windows Settings (WIN + I), then navigate the menu to View -> Advanced Display. There you will find in blue that it says “Show properties for display adapter 1”, which you need to click on.

graphics memory

In the window that opens, you will be able to check the amount of VRAM allocated to your graphics card, whether it is integrated or not (in our example it is not, but if your graphics card is integrated, you will see it). Be careful, because if your graphic is integrated, the data it puts to the right of “Dedicated video memory” are fictitious, and are in fact RAM reserved for VRAM.

If you have Windows 11, you can check this if you open Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC), go to the Performance tab and select your graphics card (it usually shows as GPU 0). In the lower area, you will see these same parameters.

How to allocate more VRAM in Windows

Logically, when you have a dedicated graphics card, it already has its own VRAM and you won’t need to allocate more, so normally this method will only be used by users who want to play with integrated graphics and have problems due to insufficient memory. However, old or low-end graphics cards can also experience problems of this nature due to the demands of modern games (we are writing this article precisely because many people are familiar with The Last of Us Part I on PC ).

To do this, you need to open the Windows registry editor (press WIN + R and in the box that opens, type “regedit” without quotes and press OK). You will now need to access the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareIntel

VRAM Registry Editor

Once there, right click on Intel (the folder on the left) and select New -> Key. A new “folder” will be created hanging from Intel that will need to be called MGM.

Click on GMM to enter this key, and on the right side, click on a blank space to select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value, which you need to call DedicatedSegmentSize. Double click on this key to edit it, and the first thing to do is to select the base Decimal. Next, in Value Info, you need to put the VRAM value in megabytes you want to assign (we recommend powers of 2, eg 512, 1024, etc.).

Dedicated segment size

Note that this method isn’t guaranteed to fix your problems, but it’s worth a try if you’ve been trying to run VRAM-intensive games on a PC with integrated graphics.

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