Extra Vram on framework 13

So, I got the Framework 13 Ryzen 7 with 64 GB of DDR5 RAM, and in the BIOS, you can switch your GPU to ‘game optimize,’ which seems to dedicate 4 GB of the RAM to dedicated GPU memory. Anyways, I’m never gonna use 64 GB of RAM and wondering if I can transfer more RAM over to VRAM. I do have 29.8 GB of shared GPU memory, which I assume is from my RAM, but my computer never uses it. Can someone please help or give me more insight? I would love to get more VRAM.

2 Likes

The VRAM will be increased automaticly when more is needed. Modern games have a setting to ignore or disable the VRAM memory limit.

In the games I play I have never seen a ignore vram memory limit and I also do alot of VR and 3D simulations, and I have never seen an option to ignore a memory limit

Which games do you play? GTA 5 has a setting, the Ghost Recon titles has this setting. Rather old games.

I posted this feature request to enable more VRAM: BIOS Feature Request: Add ability to specify UMA size on AMD APUs .

The BIOS change is particularly necessary for Linux, and applications and libraries not capable (yet?) of dynamically requesting more VRAM from the system. The AMD’s ROCm framework and PyTorch libraries used for machine learning, unfortunately, are prominently in that category at the moment. The situation with games seems to be better, both on Windows and using Vulkan on Linux: many of them are able to get the VRAM allocated as needed.

2 Likes

So is it not possible on windows or is there any workaround or do we have to wait until framework updates the bios to include this feature.

My understanding is that it’s more possible on Windows, and that a good number of Windows applications and games can already take advantage of the shared memory, and allocate it as VRAM. Perhaps that understanding is incorrect - I don’t really use Windows myself.

In either case, the limitation is really on the software side. With the right software you should be able to use a good part of your 64GB RAM with the GPU. However, especially on Linux, a lot of software today relies on VRAM statically carved out according to a BIOS setting. And the BIOS on FW13 AMD currently doesn’t allow adjusting this, beyond the “game optimized” 4GB option.

So, for Linux, we can either wait for a BIOS update (though I’ve seen no commitment that it will ever come), or for dynamic VRAM allocation to be implemented in software. With some of the software in question being open-source, perhaps enhancing it with the necessary bits is also a possibility.

If things don’t already work this way on Windows, I’m afraid the BIOS change might be the only option. But, sorry, I can’t speak about that with any authority.

1 Like