This is a tough question about RAM.

[nelska]

My processor is  4ghz

my gpu is total available graphics memory is 12GB

dedicated video memory is 4GB

How much ram should I hold..

 

I currently have 16gb but... wouldnt 12gb make it even?

I'm just wondering if I should remove a stick.. I have 4 sticks of 4gb.. But will that effect the pairing? duel channel? thanks.

I'm not sure if I would even be quicker to just use 8gb of ram on a duel channel slot setting.

[nelska]

that's a top heavy bottleneck isnt it?

[MartinKweh]

What exactly is the pc specs? Im assuming this is ryzen. But 4 sticks that fills all the slots will still make it dual channel. Im not sure about removing one but i think that disables the dual channel connection.

 

Now on the gpu memory, i dont quite understand what you are saying but ill consider two scenarios. 

 

1. You have a descrete gpu with 12gb vram and 4gb dedicated??????

 

2. You have a ryzen apu and you dedicated 4gb of the ram to the igpu. 

[nelska]

1. yes

 its intel.

 

I'm trying to figure out if I should match ram to virtual ram or not.

[Eigenvektor]

9 minutes ago, nelska said:

duel channel?

Are your RAM sticks fighting for dominance?

 

I'm not sure what you're asking exactly, but the amount of RAM for your PC doesn't have to match the RAM on your GPU.

Dedicated RAM implies an iGPU, but you say you have a GPU with 12 GB... why would you have dedicated RAM?

[MartinKweh]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Are your RAM sticks fighting for dominance?

 

I'm not sure what you're asking exactly, but the amount of RAM for your PC doesn't have to match the RAM on your GPU.

Dedicated RAM implies an iGPU, but you say you have a GPU with 12 GB... why would you have dedicated RAM?

Im confused as well 

[nelska]

sorry if I've wasted time.

 

Gtx 960

total available graphics memory: 12267mb

dedicated video memory: 4096 mb

[Eigenvektor]

The GTX 960 has 4 GB of VRAM (Video RAM). I'm not sure where the 12 GB is coming from. Is that some setting in your BIOS? If so, that's for the CPUs iGPU, which you don't need if you have a dedicated GPU.

[MartinKweh]

5 minutes ago, nelska said:

sorry if I've wasted time.

 

Gtx 960

total available graphics memory: 12267mb

dedicated video memory: 4096 mb

Uhm I think you meant 12gb system memory and 4gb vram. 

 

And how exactly did you have 12gb system memory if you have 4 sticks of 4gb? Unless one of those is faulty, i dont think its supposed to show 12gb.

 

Also if you have an i7 3rd gen at least, i think it will somehow support quad channel memory if the motherboard supports it.

 

Or somehow you dedicated 12 gb of your system memory to the igpu in the cpu, then thats a really bad move.

[nelska]

when i go to the adapter information tab in display settings the first thing that pops up is total available graphics memory is 12gb. so im just assuming 16gb of actual ram is too much for the card and i should remove one. but its duel channel. can you use 3 sticks of 4 gb ram? or will it bottleneck all 3 sticks?

[Eigenvektor]

Your system memory has nothing to do with your GPUs VRAM. There is no such thing as too much RAM for your GPU. Your GPU has its own RAM.

 

Which adapter information? Can you show a screen shot? Because it sounds like you have a dedicated GPU but are somehow using an iGPU.

[MartinKweh]

Uhm . I think you somehow allocated 12 gb of your system ram as vram for igpu..

[nelska]

https://imgur.com/a/YsCot6S

[nelska]

I'm talking about.. what's this? https://imgur.com/a/bXHPYjR

 

Do we want that to match RAM?

[Eigenvektor]

What that screen shot is telling you is, that your GPU has 4 GB of VRAM, it is somehow sharing/using 8 GB of system memory, for a total of 12 GB of video memory. Is this a laptop with Nvidia Optimus? In any case you don't need that number to match your computer's RAM.

[nelska]

8 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

What that screen shot is telling you that your GPU has 4 GB of VRAM, it is somehow sharing/using 8 GB of system memory, for a total of 12 GB of video memory. Is this a laptop with Nvidia Optimus? In any case you don't need that number to match your computer's RAM.

That's... what I wanna know about. well.. i've never heard of nvidia optimus but I would love to know if duel channel and a third stick will work without slowing anything down. I'm probably just going to "stick" with 16gb of ram. Thanks.

[Eigenvektor]

35 minutes ago, nelska said:

That's... what I wanna know about. well.. i've never heard of nvidia optimus but I would love to know if duel channel and a third stick will work without slowing anything down. I'm probably just going to "stick" with 16gb of ram. Thanks.

You should not remove a RAM stick, since that would disable dual channel, which would slow things down. Dual channel requires matched sticks of RAM in each paired slot. So you can use either 2 or 4, but not 3.

 

What Windows is telling you is, that your GPU has 4 GB of VRAM. If your GPU runs out of VRAM, then it can use up to 8 GB of system memory, which gives your GPU access to up to 12 GB of total VRAM. Which would then leave your CPU with only 8 GB of RAM out of your total of 16 GB.

 

This shouldn't happen unless the GPU runs out of VRAM and would also be very slow. So you don't actually want that to happen.

[BTGbullseye]

10 hours ago, nelska said:

I'm talking about.. what's this? https://imgur.com/a/bXHPYjR

 

Do we want that to match RAM?

You see that 8171 MB of Shared System Memory? That's system RAM that DirectX allocates as overflow for if you exceed the dedicated VRAM of your GPU. (the amount allocated will fluctuate based on how much system RAM is actually in use, but it defaults to half your total system RAM whenever you aren't using more than half your system RAM) It's similar to how back in the day there was Virtual Memory, where Windows would allocate a section of your HDD for use as RAM if you exceeded your actual RAM capacity. It's always slower, but it usually better than something not running at all because you're exceeding the VRAM limit of your GPU.