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More Bootcamp Issues with 2012 MBA: HD4000 Memory Allocation?

This and the non-turbo boost for the i7 really is a poor show by Apple, what a great way to piss off customers :-(

BTW is it better to stick with Apple's Windows 7 64 bit driver for the Intel 4000 or download an Intel one? If the latter, where should I go to download it? Thanks
 
oxfordguy said:
This and the non-turbo boost for the i7 really is a poor show by Apple, what a great way to piss off customers :-(
Click to expand...

It probably goes to show that Apple doesn't really prioritize their Windows drivers. Mountain Lion is 2 weeks out. Let's see if they release an update to the MacBook Air firmware and Boot Camp drivers then.

You can find Intel's driver here.
 
Still testing some stuff...

I've been screwing around with benchmarks, drivers, and even Windows 8 just to see how they respond. I am almost starting to wonder if this is more of an Intel thing as the drivers they provide don't seem to be any better if at all from what I have seen.
 
I've been having this problem too. I have the 2012 13" macbook air with 8gb ram.

I tried using vmware as an alternative. In VM 128mb of VRAM is recognised. But games are too laggy and stutter too much for this to be a viable option.

Was any resolution ever discovered? It's a lose-lose situation at the moment - Boot camp runs at native speeds but will only acknowledge 64mb vram, and parallels or VM will recognise more vram, but won't run at native speeds.

Am really desperate to find a solution here. Has anyone had any success at all?
 
aquietmeow said:
I've been having this problem too. I have the 2012 13" macbook air with 8gb ram.

I tried using vmware as an alternative. In VM 128mb of VRAM is recognised. But games are too laggy and stutter too much for this to be a viable option.

Was any resolution ever discovered? It's a lose-lose situation at the moment - Boot camp runs at native speeds but will only acknowledge 64mb vram, and parallels or VM will recognise more vram, but won't run at native speeds.

Am really desperate to find a solution here. Has anyone had any success at all?
Click to expand...

I've waited for months to see what the 13" rMBP would bring but have decided to go for the 13" MacBook Air after the disappointing specs (and high price premium for the retina display). Since I'll be running Windows 7 x64 in Boot Camp I'd also be interested in knowing whether or not the VRAM issue with the i7 CPU has been resolved by the latest EFI firmware update. Otherwise I'll go for the i5 1.8 GHz model instead.
 
I got a 2012 13" MBA Full-Spec that was purchased late September, came pre-installed with Mountain Lion. I followed the Apple prompts and downloaded my driver support onto a blank DVD to install them once I installed Win7 Ultimate 64bit edition using bootcamp. Could someone please tell me where and what area to goto when logged into Windows to find out if mine has this problem as well?
 
intz2nu said:
I got a 2012 13" MBA Full-Spec that was purchased late September, came pre-installed with Mountain Lion. I followed the Apple prompts and downloaded my driver support onto a blank DVD to install them once I installed Win7 Ultimate 64bit edition using bootcamp. Could someone please tell me where and what area to goto when logged into Windows to find out if mine has this problem as well?
Click to expand...

The first post in this thread showed the output of CPU-Z, but I suspect that GPU-Z should also work:

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/2181/TechPowerUp GPU-Z v0.6.6.html

Just run this utility and it should display the amount of RAM available to the HD 4000 in Windows
 
It happened to me, too. I installed Windows 7 Pro and it also showed 64MB vRAM. The strange thing is that I got a 6.5 in the Windows Experience Index.

I got 7.2-7.3 in CPU
7.3-7.4 in memory
6.5 graphics
6.5 the other graphics
7.9 hard drive

I tried playing Diablo 3 and it stuttered even more than in OSX.

Not to mention that Windows 7 does not look remotely as pretty as OSX.

I also came to realise that I did NOT miss Windows. :eek:
 
I would definitely recommend downloading the latest Intel drivers from their website. Apple is notorious for not keeping the Bootcamp drivers up to date.

Reading the initial posts on this thread, it looked like the original problem would have pre-dated any driver fixes by Intel. It isn't clear to me that anybody posted later with a definite answer regarding the Intel drivers, so that is where I would start.
 
I didn't realize at the time there was a GPU-Z, I can test that and give it a go. Someone also said that the memory allocation is dynamic and is up to 512MB instead of a static allocation of 512MB. Can anyone else confirm this? I know the EFI fix definitely addressed the turbo-boost issue though, that is confirmed.
 
I still haven't had the time to grab my MBA and find out if mine is having this issue as well, though I am curious if any of you folks found a full complete fix for whats going on?
 
Well, according to Notebook Check in their review of the 13" i5 MBA:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Apple-MacBook-Air-13-Mid-2012-Subnotebook.80041.0.html

GPU-Z yields the following result (0 GB memory):

So we're outa luck unless CPU-Z gives us some information. If I do pick up a MBA I'll make sure it's the i5 version just to make sure Boot Camp graphics are optimized in Windows 7. Since battery life is also greater compared with the i7 I prefer the base model anyway.
 

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Guys, this is a non-issue, panic for nothing!

The 64 mb indicated by GPU-Z is the MINIMUM amount of Ram that is always reserved for the HD 4000 GPU. Once you need more than that 64 mb, more memory is automatically allocated to the HD 4000.

In windows 7 64b, on the MBA '12 8GB version, it can go up to 1696 MB. I assume that the maximum amount is lower for the 4 GB base model, as it is under OSX, but I'm not sure about that.

So relax, it is not a bootcamp issue, just keep your drivers up to date and you'll have a hell of a machine for Windows!

btw, it plays most games I tried so far pretty damn good (for a laptop)!
 
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