Hardware reserved memory on A315

I have two similar notebooks A315-42-R7DR (AMD Ryzen 3 3200U, 8GB RAM) and A315-54K-34G9 (Intel® Core™ i3-7020U, 8GB RAM).

The internal graphics of the AMD has 2.1 GB RAM hardware reservered, the Intel only 124MB

Thus the AMD has only 5.9 GB free RAM, whereas the Intel has 7.9 GB.

As both notebooks are in the lower price segment and positioned in the office area, I do not understand this large difference and would like to dedicate the memory of my AMD laptop to my applications and not reserve for video processing.

I have checked different options that are discussed in such cases, but neither there is a BIOS setting nor is the extend startup setting in msconfig wrong. Any ideas why this large difference and how I can adust it?

Accepted answers

All comments

JackE

Neither model has a separate GPU so they both rely on sharing system RAM. That said, the 42 has better graphics & thinner TN/IPS display capabilities, as well as higher RAM potential, than the 54. For an office environment, both should perform fine with only 4GB available with the 42 showing an edge in graphics intensive office apps. The other advantage of the 42 is that it has two RAM slots vs only one for the 54, thus more flexibly upgraded if/when needed. Jack E/NJ

brummyfan2

Hi,
Unfortunately, it's how AMD chipset manages the memory allocation, you could try the solution 1 in the link below, if you are running short of RAM, I can only suggest you to increase the amount of RAM.
https://appuals.com/windows-10-wont-use-full-ram/

rreddy78

This is really sad on AMD processors. And Acer has no provided a BIOS option to change that. It uses 0.25% of the installed physical memory for the GPU..

rreddy78

Hey, I found something that might not be true:

"Thus the AMD has only 5.9 GB free RAM, whereas the Intel has 7.9 GB"

In the AMD system the OS and the GPU uses the 2.1GB of RAM together leaving 5.9G entirely for applications. This is something I understood after looking at the memory usage in Linux and Windows together.

I really doubt if 7.9G of RAM is free for applications on the Intel system. If so where is OS then ?

I believe that on the Intel system, 124MB of RAM is reserved for GPU but rest of RAM is shared between applications and the OS, so effectively it might turn out to be the same.

JackE

>>>so effectively it might turn out to be the same. >>>

Agreed.

Jack E/NJ

Teksal

There's some documentation on the subject from Intel https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/graphics/ReleaseNotes_GFX_15_36_21_4222.pdf

Basically, the number 128MB is fictitious to satisfy some programs which require dedicated memory to be present, so Intel Graphics uses shared, not dedicated, memory and dynamically allocates as needed. THere's not a similar document from AMD but it seems AMD uses dedicated memory (dedicates a fixed size of memory at the start). This could be the reason why AMD performs slightly better than equivalent Intel models (space vs performance dilemma).