Other How to increase vRAM for HD3000 graphics

[vista980622]

Terminal command to increase vRAM for HD3000 graphics (Mac mini 2011 or MacBook Pro 2011)

From *MB - The amount of vRAM you currently have. You can find it in System Profiler.

From 256MB to 384MB

cd /S*/L*/Ext*/AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext/C*/M*

sudo cp AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.backup

sudo perl -pi -e 's|\xC7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x12|\xc7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x18|g' AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB

sudo touch /S*/L*/Extensions

From 256MB to 512MB

cd /S*/L*/Ext*/AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext/C*/M*

sudo cp AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.backup

sudo perl -pi -e 's|\xC7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x12|\xc7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x20|g' AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB

sudo touch /S*/L*/Extensions

From 384MB to 1GB

cd /S*/L*/Ext*/AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext/C*/M*

sudo cp AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.backup

sudo perl -pi -e 's|\xC7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x18|\xc7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x40|g' AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB

sudo touch /S*/L*/Extensions

From 384MB to 512MB

cd /S*/L*/Ext*/AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext/C*/M*

sudo cp AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.backup

sudo perl -pi -e 's|\xC7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x18|\xc7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x20|g' AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB

sudo touch /S*/L*/Extensions

From 512MB to 1GB

cd /S*/L*/Ext*/AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext/C*/M*

sudo cp AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.backup

sudo perl -pi -e 's|\xC7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x20|\xc7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x40|g' AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB

sudo touch /S*/L*/Extensions

(Thanks to user Grama for the following tutorial!)
When done with everything above, edit the Info.plist at AppleIntelHD3000Graphics.kext/C*
Have to add after VRAMOverrride the VRAMSize key, it will be like this:
<key>VRAMOverride</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>VRAMSize</key>
<integer>1024</integer>

Add these last two lines (VRAMSize integer value should match with the value you picked to edit the first kext, save it and patch and fix the extensions with Kext Utility and you are good to go!

 

[miretogo]

Thanks for your post. I have wondered before if changing the memory allocation was possible

Do these commands also work for Intel HD Graphics 4000?

Also, have you tried allocating 2 GB of memory to the integrated graphics card (using "80" instead of "40" in the command)?

Finally, did you run any benchmarks and did you experience any unwanted side effects (e.g. reduced OS stability or increased heat or noise)?

 

[fhall1]

Have a look here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1573528/

 

[vista980622]

Thanks for your post. I have wondered before if changing the memory allocation was possible

Do these commands also work for Intel HD Graphics 4000?

Also, have you tried allocating 2 GB of memory to the integrated graphics card (using "80" instead of "40" in the command)?

Finally, did you run any benchmarks and did you experience any unwanted side effects (e.g. reduced OS stability or increased heat or noise)?

As fhall1 indicated, Have a look here for changing VRAM on Intel HD4000: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1573528/

Theoretically it would work, but please make a backup before modifying the kept.

 

[dvdchance]

Has anyone actually tried this on a 2011 Mini?

How is it working out for you? Any freezes or other issues?

 

[videotects]

Successfully upgraded! Now 1 GB to 2 GB VRAM possible?

Hi there,

thanks first of all for the terminal lines. I followed them and it worked flawlessly. I upgraded from 512MB to 1024 MB VRAM. See the picture:

Now do I understand it Correctly that when I want to upgrade from 1GB to 2 GB VRAM now, that I have to type in these lines:

cd /S*/L*/Ext*/AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext/C*/M*

sudo perl -pi -e 's|\xC7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x40|\xc7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x80|g' AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB

sudo touch /S*/L*/Extensions

Also does anyone has tried this fix already? Has anyone tried 2GB with the HD3000 is there any weird graphic glitches or other issues that could happen?

Thanks for the help.

Best Regards,
Nicolas

 

[maserluv]

Hi Guys,

I was not in the right state of mine and did the commands on my MacBook air 2011.

Now the Air 2011 shows 5mb of video ram and it shutter the screen.

Is there any command to get back my original 384mb ram?

Regards Wayne

 

[Zellio]

Does having so much Vram for such slow gpus even make a difference? Wouldn't the gpu be bottlenecked long before using anywhere near 1 gb vram?

 

[fhall1]

Hi Guys,

I was not in the right state of mine and did the commands on my MacBook air 2011.

Now the Air 2011 shows 5mb of video ram and it shutter the screen.

Is there any command to get back my original 384mb ram?

Regards Wayne

You'll probably get a better response if you post this in the laptop forum

 

[paulrbeers]

Does having so much Vram for such slow gpus even make a difference? Wouldn't the gpu be bottlenecked long before using anywhere near 1 gb vram?

I agree! It seems like it would be like putting 16+GB of RAM in an old single core Pentium 4 Machine. Sure you can do it, but the CPU would be a bottleneck long before the RAM in 99.999999% of the time. So why bother? We are talking about the HD3000.....

 

[That-Guy]

Anyone tried this on Yosemite or is this Mavericks only?

Also would a software update wipe this? For example if 10.10.1 came out would I have to run the command again?

Thanks in advance

 

[mabaker]

That would be very welcome if somebody tested it under Yosemite?

 

[turbowald]

Thanks very much for this great thread. I was wondering about this, as I've just purchased my MacBook Pro 13" early 2011 and upgraded it to Yosemite.

This evening I've tested the above terminal command for 512MB > 1024MB on Yosemite 10.10.0. Graphics were already running at 512MB VRAM due to the MacBook having 16GB RAM.

The initial result following restart: Boot was very slow, and upon login VRAM showed as 3MB. Terrible graphical performance.

Next step was to recover my backup .kext and restart; 3MB issue persisted following restart.

Then, downloaded and ran the following utility to repair kexts:
http://cvad-mac.narod.ru/index/0-4

This restored my original 512MB VRAM configuration. Next and original step was to get to 1024MB

My process on Yosemite to get 1024MB:
1) Run the original terminal command in this thread for 512MB > 1024MB (and assuming you can replace this with the upgrade of your choice)
2) Run the above-linked utility in this post directly afterwards
3) Restart
4) Enjoy

Graphics now test successfully at 1024MB VRAM. Whether it will survive a software update - I'm not sure, but easy enough to repeat

 

[bit]

Successfully upgraded!

Thanks very much for this great thread. I was wondering about this, as I've just purchased my MacBook Pro 13" early 2011 and upgraded it to Yosemite.

This evening I've tested the above terminal command for 512MB > 1024MB on Yosemite 10.10.0. Graphics were already running at 512MB VRAM due to the MacBook having 16GB RAM.

The initial result following restart: Boot was very slow, and upon login VRAM showed as 3MB. Terrible graphical performance.

Next step was to recover my backup .kext and restart; 3MB issue persisted following restart.

Then, downloaded and ran the following utility to repair kexts:
http://cvad-mac.narod.ru/index/0-4

This restored my original 512MB VRAM configuration. Next and original step was to get to 1024MB

My process on Yosemite to get 1024MB:
1) Run the original terminal command in this thread for 512MB > 1024MB (and assuming you can replace this with the upgrade of your choice)
2) Run the above-linked utility in this post directly afterwards
3) Restart
4) Enjoy

Graphics now test successfully at 1024MB VRAM. Whether it will survive a software update - I'm not sure, but easy enough to repeat

Thanks a lot! it worked like a charm!

 

[Maxinho]

Does this work with Yosemite and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB

Hello there,

I was using Mavericks and I'm sure my dedicated VRAM had gone upto 1024MB, this was great! I use my machine for 3d rendering, not complicated stuff, mainly building stills. I then upgraded to Yosemite (which I'm not sure about, as i can't use my Drawing software now!!) but the graphics now says NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB, does this hack work? someone please help! Don't want to f things up! My machine is a mid 2012 MBP 8 gb etc etc. Many thanks

 

[Grama]

Do not really changes

Sorry to end with the party, but this tweak do not really changes the vram quantity.
See the screenshot with the proof. I used a Apple's development tool to see the behave of vram in real time and as you can see the real max amount still 512mb + 32mb (internal dedicate memory).
512mb is a real limitation on this vcard. Perhaps there is another place to change or anything else to do? If someone knows a way to really changes the vram on mac os, it should be really useful!
Cya

 

[qcmacmini]

Interestingly, a current MacBook Air has 1.5GB of 4GB allocated to the HD5000 graphics, but my 2012 Mac mini only allocated 1GB of my 16GB to VRAM.

I'm wondering why Apple went with 1.5GB on the MacBook Air?

 

[Grama]

The party is on again!

After some research I figure out how to make this tweak really works, you have to edit the Info.plist at AppleIntelHD3000Graphics.kext/C*
Have to add after VRAMOverrride the VRAMSize key, it will be like this:
<key>VRAMOverride</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>VRAMSize</key>
<integer>1024</integer>

Add these last two lines (VRAMSize integer value should match with the value you picked to edit the first kext, save it and patch and fix the extensions with Kext Utility and you are good to go!

Have fun! After several tests and benchmark I realize that 1024 vram size is the best. More then that your gpu don't use, believe me, I tried!

The proof screenshot:

 

[paulrbeers]

After some research I figure out how to make this tweak really works, you have to edit the Info.plist at AppleIntelHD3000Graphics.kext/C*
Have to add after VRAMOverrride the VRAMSize key, it will be like this:
<key>VRAMOverride</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>VRAMSize</key>
<integer>1024</integer>

Add these last two lines (VRAMSize integer value should match with the value you picked to edit the first kext, save it and patch and fix the extensions with Kext Utility and you are good to go!

Have fun! After several tests and benchmark I realize that 1024 vram size is the best. More then that your gpu don't use, believe me, I tried!

The proof screenshot:

But does it actually make a difference? The HD3000 wasn't that great of a GPU (I had a base 2011 so I know). I really doubt that giving it a bunch more vRAM is going to really make any difference (unless you happen to utilize a process that stores a lot of data in vRAM but doesn't require a lot of GPU power behind the vRAM which has to be a very limited use case). I'd love to actually see some bench marks that proves whether it is even worth doing this hack....

 

[Grama]

Benchmarks

But does it actually make a difference? The HD3000 wasn't that great of a GPU (I had a base 2011 so I know). I really doubt that giving it a bunch more vRAM is going to really make any difference (unless you happen to utilize a process that stores a lot of data in vRAM but doesn't require a lot of GPU power behind the vRAM which has to be a very limited use case). I'd love to actually see some bench marks that proves whether it is even worth doing this hack....

I did some benchmarks, the system version are not equals cause first benchmarks with 512mb vram was made with yosemite 10.10.1 and now 10.10.2.
Without the Info.plist change it was all equals the 512mb benchmark, but now it changed. With more then 1024mb vram the benchmark don't get better results.
I used the unigine heaven benchmark 4.0 ( http://unigine.com/products/heaven/ ) it's free, if some other members could do it and post the results so we can see in different machines the real changes would be nice! I did all benchmarks in the same condition, after a fresh restart and with the same apps open.
See the screenshot.

 

[paulrbeers]

I did some benchmarks, the system version are not equals cause first benchmarks with 512mb vram was made with yosemite 10.10.1 and now 10.10.2.
Without the Info.plist change it was all equals the 512mb benchmark, but now it changed. With more then 1024mb vram the benchmark don't get better results.
I used the unigine heaven benchmark 4.0 ( http://unigine.com/products/heaven/ ) it's free, if some other members could do it and post the results so we can see in different machines the real changes would be nice! I did all benchmarks in the same condition, after a fresh restart and with the same apps open.
See the screenshot.

I'm surprised it helped even that much to be honest. The biggest question is does it make it anymore useful though. My point is if in a "normal" gaming situation by upping the VRAM if it takes it from 10 FPS to 15FPS, it still using "usable".... Probably with Unigine's Heaven benchmark is that it isn't a real life scenario.

Either way at least it gives tangible performance increase which is pretty cool.

 

[lpl]

Hello, i tried on macbook air I7 Late 2011 with HD3000

512 MO
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=529176&stc=1&d=1423581578

1024 MO
https://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=529177&stc=1&d=1423581578

Its s ok.

Thanks.

 

[mestregroda]

Is there a way to increase VRAM for 320M?
I will upgrade from 4Gb RAM to 16Gb RAM and I am wondering if VRAM can increase too.

 

[kdimerc]

So I've accidentally increased my vRAM to 3GB (I know, it was stupid. I don't wanna talk about it.) And now, as you'd expect, my mac is running extremely slowly and the screen shudders. Is there away to revert it to it's original memory distribution? Can I replace the value (i.e. x18, x20) with a decimal to shrink it back down? Or is there an entirely separate code needed to send the memory back to it's default allocations?

 

[ixxx69]

So I've accidentally increased my vRAM to 3GB (I know, it was stupid. I don't wanna talk about it.) And now, as you'd expect, my mac is running extremely slowly and the screen shudders. Is there away to revert it to it's original memory distribution? Can I replace the value (i.e. x18, x20) with a decimal to shrink it back down? Or is there an entirely separate code needed to send the memory back to it's default allocations?

I addressed this in the thread you started here. BTW, that was the Mac Pro forum, and this is the Mac mini forum and you have a MBP... I know that maybe you're in a bit of a panic, but try to pick a spot and stick with it, and be sure to explain the hardware you have in case it's a factor.