Performance tips for 16GB integrated graphics

[mayor of now]

I've got a Radeon 780M with 16GB RAM shared between the CPU and GPU. My current allocation is 6GB GPU and 10GB CPU. Alyx warns that it wants more RAM when you open it, but the combined recommendation of 18GB is more than my system can support.

It played fine for nearly four hours until I got the shotgun. Since then, however, the framerate has dropped noticably. I explored the two small rooms and then went on to the resin station. The environment doesn't seem any more complex, but the performance is much worse.

Any tips for how to make this the most playable? Should I try 4GB VRAM and 12GB RAM?

I'm running at a 30W TDP and low settings over Steam Link to an Oculus Quest 2.

[soy milk]

here's a tip get a dedicated graphics card

[CynicalMT™]

yeah no thats impossible no tips for that, the game itself needs atleast 60-70 percent of the cpu and ram not even talking about the graphics card there is no way you will possibly be able to play hla smoothly on cpu dedicated graphics, also wdym 10gb cpu and 6gb gpu? idk what specs you have but thats the first time ive seen someone say that they allocate gigabytes to their cpu, sorry to say but there are really no tips for your rig you need a more beefier pc basically and minimum 6gb graphics for any pcvr title i would say

[mayor of now]

Many of the AMD Ryzen processors have integrated Radeon graphics. You allocate RAM between the two in the BIOS.

My options are 3, 4, 6, and 8 GB dedicated to the GPU. It's been on 6.

I've read recently that Razer has a tool that kills non-gaming processes while you're gaming. It's a brand new device so there shouldn't be much running in the background, but maybe I'll try it and see.

[AG4VR]

There's only one possible solution to your problem. You're obviously on a laptop so a dedicated graphics card isn't a viable solution which normally would (a) free up the ram being used by the gpu and (b) alleviate performance issues you're having.

You need to upgrade the amount of ram in your laptop and pray that there are available unused slots to do that.

Adding another 16 gigs would likely lessen the severity of the performance issues you're having. I say lessen because you'll never be able to run Alyx smoothly on that kind of setup.

System ram is never as fast as the vram on a dedicated graphics card and no matter what you will always be giving up ram you need for the CPU to run the GPU.

[CynicalMT™]

Originally posted by mayor of now:

Many of the AMD Ryzen processors have integrated Radeon graphics. You allocate RAM between the two in the BIOS.

My options are 3, 4, 6, and 8 GB dedicated to the GPU. It's been on 6.

I've read recently that Razer has a tool that kills non-gaming processes while you're gaming. It's a brand new device so there shouldn't be much running in the background, but maybe I'll try it and see.

ohhh i see, i mean playing vr on a laptop is never gonna be smooth, you definitely need dedicated components if you plan on playing vr and other resource intensive things, as said above system allocations are way different and inconsistent then dedicated components so theres really only one option here and thats getting a pc (p.s i also wouldn't recommend using the razer tool you mentioned that kills all non gaming processes most of these are windows and/or steam background processes which are unused until needed by the OS or program, killing these usually causes alot of hitching,lag, fps drops etc. and maybe even bsods if its a windows background process)

[mayor of now]

Unfortunately, shy of buying an external GPU, I can't add any RAM to this device. From what I've read, it's all soldered on.

I tried again just now. I removed all the irrelevant bits in Add/Remove Programs (🤷‍♂️ why a gaming handheld came with Office installed), reinstalled my graphics drivers, and tried that Razer Cortex Boost (which said it freed up 1.8G RAM).

I don't know how much any of those contributed, and how much was just starting cold. I had been playing for a while when it slowed down last time.

In any case, I didn't get to play for very long, but the framerate seemed fine again this time. 🤞 it stays that way.