"Discrete" laptop gpu

Jay Santos · Mar 7, 2018

Hi guys. I'm considering buying a laptop with a gaming gpu. GTX 1050ti. Lenovo Y250.
I played with the display unit. It says that it has a GTX 1050ti with 4gb vram.

When I looked at the properties, it shows it has 1GB of memory.
Then I looked at the system ram and it says 12GB of ram. The laptop has 16gb of ddr4 ram.

My question is are the GTX 1050tis in such laptops using their own onboard gddr5 ram or are they sharing the system ram? I understand that they have a dedicated gpu. I get that. But are they using their own vram?

Wouldn't they perform slower if they have to share system ram?

Eximo · Mar 7, 2018

They specifically mention RX560 4GB, GTX1050Ti 4GB, and GTX1060 3GB.

Given the modularity, I would guess they are using MXM cards. Those would typically have the GPU memory onboard.

Intel HD graphics will still consume your system memory though. So depending on the task at the moment, it might be using quite a bit of the system memory.

k1114 · Mar 7, 2018

The y520 does not use mxm. Discrete gpus will have their own vram. Only igpus use ram as vram. Chances are you were looking at the igpu taking 1gb. Showing 12 of 16 usable is too much for the igpu which would also be dynamic so is still usable as ram. There might have been an issue with the display model.

Solandri · Mar 7, 2018

Pretty much all laptops with Nvidia GPUs are now in an Optimus configuration. in Optimus, screen drawing is controlled by the integrated Intel graphics. The Intel graphics is always on and always in control of the screen. (There are a handful of laptops which let you override this and put the Nvidia GPU in full control via a BIOS setting, at the expense of battery life. And a few laptops put the Nvidia GPU in control of the external display port.)

The Nvidia GPU shows up as a co-processor. When you play a game or run a program which you've set to use the Nvidia GPU instead of the Intel GPU, it detects the Nvidia "coprocessor" and uses that to render the graphics frames. The Optimus drivers then take the completed frame, and copies it over the Intel GPU for display (vsync is essentially always on, with the Nvidia and Intel GPUs acting as your two vsync buffers).

So the Intel graphics will always be on, and always be using some of system RAM. Depending on what properties you viewed, you may have seen the amount of "video memory" reserved by the Intel GPU, not the VRAM on the Nvidia GPU. Or it could actually be a 1050Ti with only 1GB of DDR5 VRAM (which would be pretty lame). From what I'm seeing, it sounds like 4GB is just the max amount of VRAM the mobile 1050Ti can support. The vendor doesn't actually have to put in the full 4GB.

https

/www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1050-Ti-Notebook.168400.0.html

Jay Santos · Mar 7, 2018

Solandri :

Pretty much all laptops with Nvidia GPUs are now in an Optimus configuration. in Optimus, screen drawing is controlled by the integrated Intel graphics. The Intel graphics is always on and always in control of the screen. (There are a handful of laptops which let you override this and put the Nvidia GPU in full control via a BIOS setting, at the expense of battery life. And a few laptops put the Nvidia GPU in control of the external display port.)

The Nvidia GPU shows up as a co-processor. When you play a game or run a program which you've set to use the Nvidia GPU instead of the Intel GPU, it detects the Nvidia "coprocessor" and uses that to render the graphics frames. The Optimus drivers then take the completed frame, and copies it over the Intel GPU for display (vsync is essentially always on, with the Nvidia and Intel GPUs acting as your two vsync buffers).

So the Intel graphics will always be on, and always be using some of system RAM. Depending on what properties you viewed, you may have seen the amount of "video memory" reserved by the Intel GPU, not the VRAM on the Nvidia GPU. Or it could actually be a 1050Ti with only 1GB of DDR5 VRAM (which would be pretty lame). From what I'm seeing, it sounds like 4GB is just the max amount of VRAM the mobile 1050Ti can support. The vendor doesn't actually have to put in the full 4GB.

https

/www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1050-Ti-Notebook.168400.0.html

Thanks for the explanation.
I'm looking to buy this thing: http

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k1114 · Mar 7, 2018

The 1050ti on a y520 has 4gb gddr5. They aren't going to say it's a 4gb version then put on less. The backlash would be bad for them, not to mention possible lawsuits of false advertising. There is no version of a 10 series gpu that has no vram of its own. You also can't add ram to vram when it has it's own. Shared is another story. Properties doesn't break it down per gpu and will mislabel things when there are 2 gpus. You'd want to look at the dx log or just use a third party app like gpuz. Do you have any other questions or other info you need clarifying?

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