My steam games are limited to 2gb of Video RAM ???

[OskOsk]

I've recently upgraded from a gaming laptop to a PC. My laptop wasn't very good as it only had 4gb of RAM. My steam games were all limited to 2gb of VRAM. My new PC has 16gb of RAM but all of my steam games are still limited to 2gb of VRAM, meaning I have to play on very low settings with frequent frame drops.
Does anybody know how to increase the VRAM limit to 8gb or even 12?
Any help / suggestions would be appreciated!

[Omega]

RAM and VRAM are two very different things.

If you have a dedicated graphics card the VRAM is seperate memory soldered to the graphics card. This can not be increased. If it's only a 2GB card it's likely a very weak one and even if it had more VRAM games would still run like crap.

If you have an integrated graphics card (Intel HD or AMD Vega) it will be allocating a part of the system RAM for VRAM usage. Downside of using the system RAM instead of dedicated VRAM is that the system memory is much slower. With integrated graphics the video RAM ammount can often be increased in the system's BIOS, don't do this, keep it to a low value (512MB for example). Manually increasing the amount of VRAM will only 'steal' memory away from the system. If an integrated chip runs out of VRAM it will start using the system memory instead which is the exact same thing as where it's VRAM is located so it makes no difference for performance.


What are the specs of your PC?

[OskOsk]

Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Model: To be filled by O.E.M.
Form Factor: Desktop
No Touch Input Detected

Processor Information:
CPU Vendor: GenuineIntel
CPU Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6600K CPU @ 3.50GHz
CPU Family: 0x6
CPU Model: 0x5e
CPU Stepping: 0x3
CPU Type: 0x0
Speed: 3504 Mhz
4 logical processors
4 physical processors
HyperThreading: Unsupported
FCMOV: Supported
SSE2: Supported
SSE3: Supported
SSSE3: Supported
SSE4a: Unsupported
SSE41: Supported
SSE42: Supported
AES: Supported
AVX: Supported
AVX2: Supported
AVX512F: Unsupported
AVX512PF: Unsupported
AVX512ER: Unsupported
AVX512CD: Unsupported
AVX512VNNI: Unsupported
SHA: Unsupported
CMPXCHG16B: Supported
LAHF/SAHF: Supported
PrefetchW: Unsupported

Operating System Version:
Windows 10 (64 bit)
NTFS: Supported
Crypto Provider Codes: Supported 311 0x0 0x0 0x0

Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
DirectX Driver Name: nvldumd.dll
Driver Version: 26.21.14.4575
DirectX Driver Version: 26.21.14.4575
Driver Date: 3 17 2020
OpenGL Version: 4.6
Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
DirectX Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
VendorID: 0x10de
DeviceID: 0x1401
Revision: 0xa1
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Logical Video Cards: 1
No SLI or Crossfire Detected
Primary Display Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Primary Display Size: 20.91" x 11.77" (23.98" diag)
53.1cm x 29.9cm (60.9cm diag)
Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
Primary VRAM: 2047 MB
Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x

Sound card:
Audio device: Speakers (Realtek High Definiti

Memory:
RAM: 16336 Mb

VR Hardware:
VR Headset: None detected

Miscellaneous:
UI Language: English
Media Type: Undetermined
Total Hard Disk Space Available: 952487 Mb
Largest Free Hard Disk Block: 505802 Mb
OS Install Date: Jan 01 1970
Game Controller: None detected
MAC Address hash: f5c65640805e9a89da27233c0da37b2346df28e7
Disk serial number hash: 1df14f27

[OskOsk]

Steam games are the only games that have this problem. Minecraft for example uses 8gb of RAM and that works perfectly fine. I also have forza horizon 4 which runs really well and with high graphic settings. I have GTA 5 and Rainbow Six Siege on steam and they both bareley hit 60 fps even with very low settings.

[_I_]

the 960 has 2g of vram
that the limit of the hardware

vram and system ram are 2 different things

[Cathulhu]

The 960 has 2GB of dedicated VRAM. That's the memory on the videocard itself.
Your system memory of 16GB is irrelevant regarding VRAM.

[JC]

what game are you having issues with.. that comp should be more than fine for most games.

[Zoomii]

VRAM and RAM are different. RAM is obviously how much you have in your PC, but VRAM is the memory of the video card.

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by Oskar's Oskar:

Steam games are the only games that have this problem. Minecraft for example uses 8gb of RAM and that works perfectly fine. I also have forza horizon 4 which runs really well and with high graphic settings. I have GTA 5 and Rainbow Six Siege on steam and they both bareley hit 60 fps even with very low settings.

Because you should have a 4GB card or better, RAM is not meant to be used as an offset for lacking hardware specs elsewhere. Comparing great performance in minecraft vs gtav is, not really something you can honestly compare and expect to have similar fps-based performance.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

960 2gb is too poor for demanding games. Buy a newer gen Laptop

[[☥] - CJ -]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

960 2gb is too poor for demanding games. Buy a newer gen Laptop

Hes on a PC now, thats the specs of the PC not the laptop.

Originally posted by Orion:

Originally posted by Oskar's Oskar:

Steam games are the only games that have this problem. Minecraft for example uses 8gb of RAM and that works perfectly fine. I also have forza horizon 4 which runs really well and with high graphic settings. I have GTA 5 and Rainbow Six Siege on steam and they both bareley hit 60 fps even with very low settings.

Because you should have a 4GB card or better, RAM is not meant to be used as an offset for lacking hardware specs elsewhere. Comparing great performance in minecraft vs gtav is, not really something you can honestly compare and expect to have similar fps-based performance.

true KIND OF, but not entirely..
Shared Memory is used in instances where VRAM is low
As he has a 2GB VRAM GPU and 16GB RAM, up to 8GB can be used for Shared Memory which can in fact help to an extent, but as its slower than VRAM how much it'll help is limited.

But yeah, 4GB VRAM is pretty much the minimum with 6/8GB being preferred.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

My bad, yes upgrade to better gpu card. Such as gtx 1650 super or better.