[SOLVED] Can I Disable iGPU To Help Me With 6.9 GB Usable Ram Problem

[JustAnotherGuy420]

I recently bought an Acer Nitro 5 with 8 Gb of ram but in my PC properties it tells me 6.9 Gb usable out of 8 Gb, I assume that is because it goes to my Ryzen 7 2700u iGpu vram. The laptop does have a dedicated gpu. Can I disable it to get the 1.1 gb back for when I want to play a game that requires 8 Gb of ram and then enable it back in Device Manager because I have the option but I'm afraid that the screen will go black. So can I disable it and if yes how do I do it?

 

[PdxPetmonster]

You might be able to go into the BIOS and enable the discrete graphics only setting. You'd have to go looking for that setting, I can't say exactly where that'd be, or if it even is in there. But if it is, that may, or may not, free up that memory.

 

[JustAnotherGuy420]

You might be able to go into the BIOS and enable the discrete graphics only setting. You'd have to go looking for that setting, I can't say exactly where that'd be, or if it even is in there. But if it is, that may, or may not, free up that memory.

Thank you for your suggestion, I checked the BIOS, there is no option to disable the iGPU, but I wish to know what would happen if I disabled it in Device Manager, and if it doesn't work, is there any way I can get my ram to be 8gb instead of 6.9 gb usable, since that was my reason of wanting to disable the iGpu in the first place?

 

[boju]

Igpu will use ram when it needs it but in your case very little if using a dedicated gpu. That 1.1GB missing is actually Windows taxing ram for itself. How else would Windows run?

If want more ram need to buy more.

The bios usually has options to prioritise how much ram is initially allocated to vram and setting this low as possible. This doesn't restrict how much ram igpu will use though, igpu if used will use as much ram as it needs.

Disabling igpu in device manager may disable the laptop screen because it is common for laptops to use the igpu to operate and route video from gpu to the display.

 

[dorsai]

CPU-Z will tell you how much memory is available to Windows. If you can't disable the iGPU in the BIOS you might be able to reduce the memory used way down to something like 128 or 256m of ram...it really depends on the BIOS provided by Acer.

The other option might be to replace the laptop memory with larger sticks...again that will depend on the BIOS and also what expansion slots, if any, Acer built into the laptop...right now memory is really cheap.