There’s clear benefit when gaming to the 4096 MB memory you get with the Gaming memory tuning setting compared with the 512 MB you get with the Productivity setting. Equally, I see less pronounced benefits when using the profiles (e.g. HYPR-RX etc).
I have 32GB memory, and mostly use the laptop for VS Code (NextJS, NodeJS etc, non-AI workflows) and browsing the web, with occasional Figma use.
Is there any benefits or drawbacks to allocating the 4096 MB memory all the time (i.e. when not gaming)? Is it best to switch between memory tuning before/after planned gaming sessions?
I report what I read elsewhere on the forum.
On an APU applications are able to allocate memory to the GPU.
Some software does not support this feature and so will have problems with 512MB only reserved for graphics, thus will benefit from UMA_GAME_OPTIMIZED. Yet most application should be fine even with a lower amount of RAM reserved.
In my experience, the only drawback has been the fact that the system is missing that 4GB of RAM for normal applications. I haven’t ended up in a situation where I’ve exhausted my available system RAM, so I just leave it in gaming mode rather than switching constantly. If I knew I was going to utilize a memory-intensive application then I’d reboot to switch it.
Energy preferences have nothing to do with RAM reserved for video.
To reserve more memory for the GPU reboot into setup menu, go to advanced setting, change UMA_AUTO (512MB reserved as VRAM) into UMA_GAME_OPTIMIZED (4GB reserved as VRAM).
Just to note, UMA_GAME_OPTIMIZED sets different amounts depending on how much total ram you have. I think that it reserves ⅛ of the system ram but is capped at 4 GB. So for someone with only 16 GB of ram it only reserves 2 GB.