How to give your graphics card more memory?

Question

ATM I have a geforce 540m graphics card which can go up to 4gb of memory, it only has 1gb atm. So how do I give it more memory?

Answer 1

I'm sorry, you can't.

videomemory (VRAM) is mounted on graphic card itself and exact amoount of memory is soldered there for good. There are no slots for add more memory, like on motherboard. You have to sell this card and buy higher version (with more memory).

Sometimes graphic cards (mostly in laptops) use shared memory. That's mean, they take some amount of RAM (dedicated for CPU) and reserve it for themselves. Advantade of this solution is cheaper manufacturing, also in specification looks nice : 1GB.

But big disadvantage is cutting/taking exact amount of RAM (from 256MB up to 2GB) only for graphic card purpose, no matter if graphic card need that amount or not. 2nd disadvantage is speed. Using shared normal RAM is (because of more complicated access) much slower, than have own VRAM.

VRAM is mounted as close as possible to GPU and for such reason all data transfers between GPU and VRAM are very fast. Sharing RAM (even 4x bigger amount) can't compare about speed with VRAM.

Answer 2

Actually the GT 540m *is* a discrete card, it's not a "chip" or integrated. However you cannot add more VRAM to the card. What happens with modern cards is that if the all the VRAM on the card is used, and more is needed, the card will allocate some system RAM as sort of page file for the VRAM, it's very noticeable when it happens though, and the game your playing will stutter badly for a few moments until the situation is resolved. This is done without any input from the user.



The GT 540M is so slow though, that adding more VRAM to it won't be of any benefit at all even if you could. But when it says "up to 4GB of memory" it just means it can use some extra system RAM you have as VRAM if it needs to.

Answer 3

1GB memory on a photos card is not sensible. No card will utilise all of it on modern hardware. the 9800GX2 is the quickest card, and that's pratically 2 enjoying cards caught jointly. they are asserting that's have been given 1GB RAM, yet its certainly 2 chips with 512MB each and every. that's genuinely an quite very quickly 512 card, (specifically the 512 8600GTS). For a single card, 1GB is basically no longer used, so do no longer pay the greater suitable for it. i've got seen a 8600GT with 1GB memory on it, and its a shaggy dog tale - the 8600GT is particularly customary precise now, and a stable little card, yet on no account will use that, subsequently why maximum fashions are 256.

Answer 4

You have an "M" for "mobility" that's a laptop...chip..(its not a "card") you cant "add ram. you can "assign" more ram to the graphs but in doing so you take it away from the "system" since laptops are limited in ram anyway reassigning ram isn't a good idea. For any of today's video "cards" the ram is fixed...you cant "add" more physical ram, years ago Voodoo came out with a video card that did have slots you could add ram to, no one I know today does that.

Answer 5

You can't. Anyway, there's no way in hell can the 540m even use 2GB of Video memory.