How much RAM will a GPU reserve for itself ?

[R3-Flex]

I read somewhere that if you have 1 GB of VRAM on your GPU then it will reserve 1 GB of your system RAM for itself ? is it true ?

 

and also , can a 32 bit OS run a  GPU which has only 64-bit drivers  long enough for me to install a 64-bit OS on it ? (GPU = Sapphire radeon rx 460)

 

and finally , can you replace/remove the southbridge heat-sink(smaller one) ? 

 

 

Edited October 11, 2016 by R3-Flex
forgot to include "64-bit drivers "

[8-Bit Ninja]

No that's utter bollocks. A gpu has its own vram, thus is doesn't need any system ram, Gpu has nothing to do with 32-64 bit os, thats cpu and motherboard based. no you cant replace the south bridge because its custom made for the board

[8-Bit Ninja]

Just now, 8-Bit Ninja said:

No that's utter bollocks. A gpu has its own vram, thus is doesn't need any system ram, Gpu has nothing to do with 32-64 bit os, thats cpu and motherboard based. no you cant replace the south bridge because its custom made for the board

As for the gpu, you should be able to plug it in a get a single out to allow you to install windows, but you may have to source a cheap gpu to use whilst you install the os

[R3-Flex]

14 minutes ago, 8-Bit Ninja said:

No that's utter bollocks. A gpu has its own vram, thus is doesn't need any system ram, Gpu has nothing to do with 32-64 bit os, thats cpu and motherboard based. no you cant replace the south bridge because its custom made for the board

Sorry i may have phrased the  question wrong, what i'm trying to say is that my new GPU has only 64-bit drivers , so i plan to upgrade my OS to 64-bit soon. I want to know that can the GPU work  on the 32-bit OS without installing drivers so that i can at least upgrade to windows 64-bit.

 

upgrading to 64bit erases all data , i would like to check if the GPU even works. 

 

GPU = Sapphire radeon rx 460

[Carlos1010]

2 hours ago, 8-Bit Ninja said:

No that's utter bollocks. A gpu has its own vram, thus is doesn't need any system ram, Gpu has nothing to do with 32-64 bit os, thats cpu and motherboard based. no you cant replace the south bridge because its custom made for the board

What are utter bollocks? I can't find that word on the internetInternet

[TheRandomness]

2 hours ago, R3-Flex said:

Sorry i may have phrased the  question wrong, what i'm trying to say is that my new GPU has only 64-bit drivers , so i plan to upgrade my OS to 64-bit soon. I want to know that can the GPU work  on the 32-bit OS without installing drivers so that i can at least upgrade to windows 64-bit.

 

upgrading to 64bit erases all data , i would like to check if the GPU even works. 

 

GPU = Sapphire radeon rx 460

You can run without drivers on a 32 bit OS.

5 minutes ago, Carlos1010 said:

What are utter bollocks? I can't find that word on the internetInternet

English slang for bullshit. 

[Godlygamer23]

On 10/11/2016 at 5:10 PM, 8-Bit Ninja said:

No that's utter bollocks. A gpu has its own vram, thus is doesn't need any system ram, Gpu has nothing to do with 32-64 bit os, thats cpu and motherboard based. no you cant replace the south bridge because its custom made for the board

The card may not "reserve" memory, but it does use system RAM if required. Below shows what NVIDIA control panel tells me. Note that my two cards reserve the same amount of memory, indicating that NVIDIA's drivers will use up to 6GB of system memory for all GPUs as required, not 6GB for each GPU.

 

GTX 970 being displayed:

Spoiler

 

GTX 560 Ti being displayed:

Spoiler

Bear in mind that while the graphics card may not be specifically "32-bit" or "64-bit," if the drivers only work with 64-bit OSes, then that's all you can use it for. In the case of the RX series from AMD, 32-bit drivers are not available, and therefore will not work with a 32-bit OS as indicated by the below screenshot.

 

Spoiler

 

[R3-Flex]

On 10/12/2016 at 5:39 AM, Godlygamer23 said:

The card may not "reserve" memory, but it does use system RAM if required. Below shows what NVIDIA control panel tells me. Note that my two cards reserve the same amount of memory, indicating that NVIDIA's drivers will use up to 6GB of system memory for all GPUs as required, not 6GB of each GPU.

 

GTX 970 being displayed:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

GTX 560 Ti being displayed:

  Reveal hidden contents

Bear in mind that while the graphics card may not be specifically "32-bit" or "64-bit," if the drivers only work with 64-bit OSes, then that's all you can use it for. In the case of the RX series from AMD, 32-bit drivers are not available, and therefore will not work with a 32-bit OS as indicated by the below screenshot.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Thankyou 

 

[System Error Message]

In the past GPUs didnt have much vram so they used some ram to as a cache for things that arent in the scene. Its still used even today (see memory - dynamic in GPUz). Its also used to swap application graphical data back and forth when used or not as many programs nowadays are gpu accelerated even browsers. Its still faster to load graphical data from ram rather than from disk and for a dedicated GPU, ram that it uses isnt permanently used so theres no ram allocated to it, its done from drivers.

 

Integrated GPUs however will have ram allocated to it from bios but it will still use system ram as well, only the ram allocated to it becomes it's vram which is what limits the how much is rendered. If a GPU's vram is full and it needs more ram it will start using system ram and start swapping out loads of data leading to huge drop in fps.

 

GPUs dont reserve ram, only IGPs. If it needs ram it will use it, if it doesnt need it it gets released.