How to assign more memory to laptop's apu?

[gagan_3]

I have a problem with my gpu's vram, i have a hp pavilion g6 1345ed running windows 10 with a radeon hd 6520g 512mb (apu's gpu) and a radeon hd 7400m 1024mb (dedicated gpu) in crossfire. It's able to run most games at 720p medium/high settings, but some games use a lot more than 512 mb and it causes my games to lag,load and stutter alot. is there a way to assign more memory to my apu? i have looked in the bios and catalyst control center but there is no such option, i have also updated the bios but there still wasn't any option for it. my cpu is the amd a6 3420m @ 2.5ghz i also have 6gigabytes of ram

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

laptop BIOS' on laptops and factory-built desktops are typically "locked down" or cut-down versions to prevent the user screwing something up then expecting the manufacturer to do warranty repair on it.

 

[gagan_3]

laptop BIOS' on laptops and factory-built desktops are typically "locked down" or cut-down versions to prevent the user screwing something up then expecting the manufacturer to do warranty repair on it.

Do you think upgrading the ram to 10gb would help?

 

[jerdle]

Ouch. A low end APU paired with a low end GPU. I also have to assume that it has low speed memory in it as well. 1333mhz or at best 1600mz.

Have you tried disabling crossfire to see if there is any performance difference?

Adding more memory wouldn't help at all. Replacing the memory with 1866mhz memory on the other hand might.

 

[imrazor]

I'm not sure about AMD APUs, but I do know that on at least some Intel iGPUs installing more RAM *will* cause the BIOS to allocate more RAM to the onboard graphics. If you have some RAM that you can borrow from a friend, you can confirm if this will work for your system.

Also, you could take the system out of Crossfire and use your dedicated GPU's 1GB of RAM, though you'd lose some GPU horsepower in the process.

EDIT: Did a little more research on this and it seems that the APU can dynamically allocate more than 512MB of RAM when in use, up to 2 or 3GB of RAM. A source of confusion may be that it only allocates 512MB of RAM when on the desktop. Can you monitor your VRAM usage while actually playing a game?

 

[gagan_3]

I'm not sure about AMD APUs, but I do know that on at least some Intel iGPUs installing more RAM *will* cause the BIOS to allocate more RAM to the onboard graphics. If you have some RAM that you can borrow from a friend, you can confirm if this will work for your system.

Also, you could take the system out of Crossfire and use your dedicated GPU's 1GB of RAM, though you'd lose some GPU horsepower in the process.

EDIT: Did a little more research on this and it seems that the APU can dynamically allocate more than 512MB of RAM when in use, up to 2 or 3GB of RAM. A source of confusion may be that it only allocates 512MB of RAM when on the desktop. Can you monitor your VRAM usage while actually playing a game?

ill try monitoring the vram right now with gpu z, and taking it out of crossfire won't help, because my dedicated gpu with 1gb of vram is a piece of shit.

 

[gagan_3]

I'm not sure about AMD APUs, but I do know that on at least some Intel iGPUs installing more RAM *will* cause the BIOS to allocate more RAM to the onboard graphics. If you have some RAM that you can borrow from a friend, you can confirm if this will work for your system.

Also, you could take the system out of Crossfire and use your dedicated GPU's 1GB of RAM, though you'd lose some GPU horsepower in the process.

EDIT: Did a little more research on this and it seems that the APU can dynamically allocate more than 512MB of RAM when in use, up to 2 or 3GB of RAM. A source of confusion may be that it only allocates 512MB of RAM when on the desktop. Can you monitor your VRAM usage while actually playing a game?

gpu-z says its using 800 mb of vram but in task manager it still says 535 mb hardware reserved ram

 

[Bretticus9k]

I have a similar laptop with an AMD A6 3420M APU Overclocked to 2.8Ghz 3Ghz boost with the 6520G and a 7670M 1GB dedicated and ive had mine go upto 1.5GB read in GPUZ but in task manager it still says 535MB Hardware reserved the extra RAM being used is showing liek any other program would its being taken but not set as hardware graphics only memory so doesn't show as hardware reserved. The best thing for an APU I can suggest is to use your RAM in dual channel same size stick and speed it gives a noticeable performance boost as the APU GPU Memory speed and everythign are linked to the RAM. I am upgrading to 8GB of RAM soon as i currently have 6GB and i tested the speed difference with the 2 x 2GB sticks that came with it as i noticed a performance drop when I first upgraded to 6GB.

 

[hang-the-9]

I have a problem with my gpu's vram, i have a hp pavilion g6 1345ed running windows 10 with a radeon hd 6520g 512mb (apu's gpu) and a radeon hd 7400m 1024mb (dedicated gpu) in crossfire. It's able to run most games at 720p medium/high settings, but some games use a lot more than 512 mb and it causes my games to lag,load and stutter alot. is there a way to assign more memory to my apu? i have looked in the bios and catalyst control center but there is no such option, i have also updated the bios but there still wasn't any option for it. my cpu is the amd a6 3420m @ 2.5ghz i also have 6gigabytes of ram

You will not get good game performance from that laptop. Best way is to get the fastest RAM your system supports and run with a matched pair of sticks. Well, actually the best way is to sell the system and get one made for games if that is what you use it for, AMD A10 at least, or an intel based laptop with an nVidia 960m card if you want to have a system for games vs one that will barely run them. About $800 for a real laptop for gaming.