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Increase dedicated video RAM by increasing RAM?

L

lunaandres

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 26, 2011
3
0
Hey guys, I have a quick question, but first I should let you know:
I have no idea wtf I'm talking about, I'm only going by what I've read online!
(I'm a big noob when it comes to computer hardware)

Anyways, I bought myself the new Macbook Pro (2012) 13 inch. Now, it doesn't have a graphics card (right?) or if it does, it sucks.

According to "can I run it.com", my laptop only has 60 MB of dedicated video ram. I read somewhere else that if you increase your computer's RAM, your dedicated video RAM should increase as well (some dude's went from 384 to 512MB), so how much would mine increase to if I install 4 more GBs? (I currently have 4)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
Sorry, not to be rude, but if you self admittedly don't know anything about computers and don't know if your computer has a graphics card, why is it important to increase VRAM? Have you run into issues where you need more or you just want more because you think you need it?
 
Well, to have 384 mbs of VRAM, you need 4 Gigs of RAM. To up it to 512 you need 8 Gigs. I'm fairly certain this is both the case for the HD3000 and HD4000 integrated cards (that is, the cards in both the 2011 and 2012 models).

I'm not sure why the site says you only have 60...

Increasing the RAM in a non-retina MacBook Pro is very easy. Just order some SO-DIMM chips online, and make sure they have the right timing and speed. I'm pretty sure MBPs (especially the 2012 version) run on 1600mHz.

You just screw off the back, pop the chips out, throw the new ones in and voila!

Plenty of guides to do that on YouTube
 
lunaandres said:
Hey guys, I have a quick question, but first I should let you know:
I have no idea wtf I'm talking about, I'm only going by what I've read online!
(I'm a big noob when it comes to computer hardware)

Anyways, I bought myself the new Macbook Pro (2012) 13 inch. Now, it doesn't have a graphics card (right?) or if it does, it sucks.

According to "can I run it.com", my laptop only has 60 MB of dedicated video ram. I read somewhere else that if you increase your computer's RAM, your dedicated video RAM should increase as well (some dude's went from 384 to 512MB), so how much would mine increase to if I install 4 more GBs? (I currently have 4)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

i assume you're going to be trying games. if so, adding ram is definitely not going to help in any real way.
 
Interstella5555 said:
Sorry, not to be rude, but if you self admittedly don't know anything about computers and don't know if your computer has a graphics card, why is it important to increase VRAM? Have you run into issues where you need more or you just want more because you think you need it?
Click to expand...

Many games don't run very well (or some don't even run at all!), telling me I need more VRAM

Glockron said:
Well, to have 384 mbs of VRAM, you need 4 Gigs of RAM. To up it to 512 you need 8 Gigs. I'm fairly certain this is both the case for the HD3000 and HD4000 integrated cards (that is, the cards in both the 2011 and 2012 models).

I'm not sure why the site says you only have 60...

Increasing the RAM in a non-retina MacBook Pro is very easy. Just order some SO-DIMM chips online, and make sure they have the right timing and speed. I'm pretty sure MBPs (especially the 2012 version) run on 1600mHz.

You just screw off the back, pop the chips out, throw the new ones in and voila!

Plenty of guides to do that on YouTube
Click to expand...
So, in theory, that should help with running games, right?
 
lunaandres said:
Many games don't run very well (or some don't even run at all!), telling me I need more VRAM


So, in theory, that should help with running games, right?
Click to expand...

no, it won't. if you bought a 13" macbook to play games, you just wasted a ton of money.
 
lunaandres said:
Hey guys, I have a quick question, but first I should let you know:
I have no idea wtf I'm talking about, I'm only going by what I've read online!
(I'm a big noob when it comes to computer hardware)

Anyways, I bought myself the new Macbook Pro (2012) 13 inch. Now, it doesn't have a graphics card (right?) or if it does, it sucks.

According to "can I run it.com", my laptop only has 60 MB of dedicated video ram. I read somewhere else that if you increase your computer's RAM, your dedicated video RAM should increase as well (some dude's went from 384 to 512MB), so how much would mine increase to if I install 4 more GBs? (I currently have 4)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

Adding more video RAM if you're not running out of it is useless, and will gain you absolutely nothing in terms of performance. I wouldn't bother increasing your RAM unless you find yourself using the swap file a lot during normal usage.

The 13" MBP has never been any good at gaming, if you bought a 13" MBP as a gaming computer, you really should've done more research before buying as it's not suited at all for it apart from very basic gaming with older games.
 
lunaandres said:
Hey guys, I have a quick question, but first I should let you know:
I have no idea wtf I'm talking about, I'm only going by what I've read online!
(I'm a big noob when it comes to computer hardware)

Anyways, I bought myself the new Macbook Pro (2012) 13 inch. Now, it doesn't have a graphics card (right?) or if it does, it sucks.

According to "can I run it.com", my laptop only has 60 MB of dedicated video ram. I read somewhere else that if you increase your computer's RAM, your dedicated video RAM should increase as well (some dude's went from 384 to 512MB), so how much would mine increase to if I install 4 more GBs? (I currently have 4)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

Buying a Mac for gaming......

Oh man, where do I begin?
 
You should sell your current 13'' MBP and get a 15'' if you're planning on installing and playing heavy games on it. The 15'' has a dedicated graphic card unlike the 13 inch.
 
lunaandres said:
Hey guys, I have a quick question, but first I should let you know:
I have no idea wtf I'm talking about, I'm only going by what I've read online!
(I'm a big noob when it comes to computer hardware)

Anyways, I bought myself the new Macbook Pro (2012) 13 inch. Now, it doesn't have a graphics card (right?) or if it does, it sucks.

According to "can I run it.com", my laptop only has 60 MB of dedicated video ram. I read somewhere else that if you increase your computer's RAM, your dedicated video RAM should increase as well (some dude's went from 384 to 512MB), so how much would mine increase to if I install 4 more GBs? (I currently have 4)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

yes, if you increase to 8GB you will also increase your VRAM to 512MB. That is however, the limit on the intel graphics, sadly. 16GB ram also results in 512MB VRAM.
 
OP, your machine has an integrated graphics card. It is nowhere near as powerful as a dedicated (on a separate chip) graphics card.

By default, with 4GB RAM, the system allocates 384MB memory to the graphics card - that's what you currently have. If you upgrade to 8GB of RAM, the system allocates 512MB of memory to the graphics. In reality, the performance boost is virtually nonexistent for majority of games.
 
lunaandres said:
Hey guys, I have a quick question, but first I should let you know:
I have no idea wtf I'm talking about, I'm only going by what I've read online!
(I'm a big noob when it comes to computer hardware)

Anyways, I bought myself the new Macbook Pro (2012) 13 inch. Now, it doesn't have a graphics card (right?) or if it does, it sucks.

According to "can I run it.com", my laptop only has 60 MB of dedicated video ram. I read somewhere else that if you increase your computer's RAM, your dedicated video RAM should increase as well (some dude's went from 384 to 512MB), so how much would mine increase to if I install 4 more GBs? (I currently have 4)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Your 13" MBP does not have a dedicated GPU. It only has the integrated GPU that sits inside the CPU.

When you go from 4GB RAM to 8GB, the shared video memory (used by the iGPU) goes up from 384MB to 512MB. You can go further by increasing the RAM to 16GB, but the video memory will stay at 512MB.

The site you linked probably only works with non-Intel GPUs. The numbers it gave was wrong.
 
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