Hardware reserved memory

[simmotech]

Yesterday, I bought a DELL Inspiron 15 3000 15.6" AMD Ryzen 5 8GB, 256SSD Laptop which has the Radeon Vega 8 graphics chip.

When I had set it up, I found that 54% of memory was used and I hadn't even installed any apps yet!

Resource Monitor shows that nearly 4GB of memory was marked as Hardware Reserved.

I then checked the graphics driver which showed the Vega 8 was claiming 3GB Shared System Memory in additional to its own 2GB discrete memory - 5GB Total Available Graphics Memory.

There is are no settings in the BIOS to change how much memory is reserved and I installed the AMD drivers and there was nothing there either.

I am not a gamer and I need the system memory back to run SQL Server. Dell support was utterly useless and I took the laptop back for a refund which was a pity because it was a nice laptop otherwise and just in my £500 budget.

My questions:-

1. Am I right in thinking that the high Hardware Reserved memory is at least partly accounted for by what the GPU was using as Shared System Memory?
2. If I look for another similar spec laptop, are there any GPUs, such as the integrated Intel UHD620, that either always use a minimal amount of shared RAM or will have a BIOS/driver setting to turn it down to the absolute minimum needed to run a Full HD Windows screen?

Thanks for any help.

 

[hang-the-9]

Yes shared video memory does count towards system reserved. But the BIOS should have had an option to change that for your system, very odd that it did not.