Solved! More video ram?

[bmarti15]

Hello almighty and powerful Gurus,

I have a HP Pavilion 17z-e000 CTO Notebook PC with a AMD Radeon HD 8330 (512 mb).
I have upgraded the ram to 2x8gb SoDimm.( max ) ( it runs fine this way)

I want to play No mans sky but the graphics are all choppy. can I allocate more ram from the 16 gb it takes the 512 from the 16 so....

Any help would be appreciated....(an un-installing NMS is not an option)

Brian

 

[ChumP]

You should find the option to allocate more VRAM to your iGPU in your BIOS.
It should allocate more RAM by default to your iGPUs VRAM anyways, but from the BIOS you can set the maximum amount allocated.

Having more VRAM though on that GPU wouldn't help much, if at all... that GPU performance is well below the minimum specs required for the game.
You won't be able to run the game smoothly either way on that laptop.

 

[bignastyid]

If you want to play no mans sky you'll need a new more powerful computer.

 

[photonboy]

You may or may not be able to allocate more memory as VRAM but if the option exists, as said, it's in the BIOS.

There's a good chance that 512MB is the maximum. But if you can then just go up to the maximum which is likely 2048MB.

Getting into the BIOS might not even be something you know how to do... it varies but for you it should be:

ESCAPE KEY + F10 (just after restart or from cold boot after turned off completely)

Then look for something related to video memory but it may not be there.

 

[photonboy]

Update:
I can't confirm this but some guy with "expert" next to his name said some modern laptops can dynamically allocate more to VRAM if needed. I've never heard of this but there is one way to check:

1) Open Task Manager->Performance
2) go down to the GPU and look at the amount dedicated (should be 512MB right now)
3) start a game in Windowed mode (use a lower resolution such as 1600x900 if 1920x1080 screen)
4) see if the VRAM number changes

I was going to call BS but there's evidence this is probably a thing and frankly it's a great idea since why dedicate memory to VRAM if you don't use it all the time?:
https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2018/10/10/detecting-video-memory-budget

I guess it can likely go pretty high if this works with 16GB so I'd say your main problem in that case would be the weak iGPU.

Bottom line though is that if you can't add more via the BIOS your only option is to drop game settings as low as possible that the game is playable or if not you can't play the game.

So drop to say 1366x768 and everything low, VSYNC OFF and monitor the FPS (Steam indicator or FRAPS). If it's too low you are SOL. If it's high enough increase some settings.

*No Man's Sky is highly unlikely to run even on LOW with 512MB for VRAM though. I know it calls for 1.5GB minimum.

 

[photonboy]

Also, just download and run the Torchlight 1 demo and see how that works. It's one of the least demanding games around. I think Steam has it or you can Google a link.

It's a good rough indicator of what you can run but these weak GPU's are going to be very, very limited in what they can play well.

2D/2.5D games like Torchlight, Diablo 3. Older games like Half Life 1 and so on. There's a lot of fun games but very few of the big, modern games even from five years ago will run well even on low settings.

 

[ChumP]

Also, just download and run the Torchlight 1 demo and see how that works. It's one of the least demanding games around. I think Steam has it or you can Google a link.

It's a good rough indicator of what you can run but these weak GPU's are going to be very, very limited in what they can play well.

2D/2.5D games like Torchlight, Diablo 3. Older games like Half Life 1 and so on. There's a lot of fun games but very few of the big, modern games even from five years ago will run well even on low settings.

Playing Half Life: Blue Shift right now... nostalgia kicked in.