[SOLVED] Not enough VRAM ?

[Vanna31]

Hi everyone.

I have an asus X52J laptop from 2011 with intel core i5 (yes I know pretty old) on which I've been doing a little more gaming lately.

I've upgraded to SSD and added extra 4gb of RAM to the already existing 4gb.

I have been doing some research on my graphic card (AMD Radeon HD 6300 series) and noticed that I only have 512mb of VRAM (at least that's what windows settings and GPU-Z say), which seems odd to me for a 2011 graphic card.
I am trying to understand why I have such low VRAM...
When I look it up online the specs say 1024mb : https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-hd-6370m.c335

But when I Iook it up via GPU-Z, that's what comes up : https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/asus-hd-6370m-512-mb.b5832
which is not exactly how my card is labeled in device manager.

Is windows 10 messing up with my GPU and underusing it or do I just have a crappy 512mb GPU ?
Also when I check GPU usage in task manager it constantly says 0% even on the game running
It doesnt seem like I have an integrated GPU, at least it doesn't show up in device manager.
Something just seems weird to me...

Either way, is there anything I can do to fix that and improve performance ?
I have tried everything : increasing VRAM via regedit and page files (don't have that option in my bios), closing all other apps, uninstalling reinstalling latest drivers, forcing the use of the dedicated GPU for games via windows settings...

Thanks for your help

 

[DSzymborski]

It's difficult because driver support for this series ended in 2015. There may be something wrong from how you describe the performance, but the truth is, it's not likely to be a VRAM issue; this was a very low-end part when it was new a decade ago. It's going to struggle to get any benefit from more VRAM. Don't forget, GPUs of several orders of magnitude more powerful at the time were making due with 512 MB of 768 MB or 1 GB of VRAM. So your answers is kind of both: there may be a problem with the card and it's a "crappy" GPU.

 

[Vanna31]

Thanks for your answer

I'm just really confused cause I play AOE 2 Definitive edition with my wife. Her laptop is even older than mine, doesn't even have dedicated GPU just integrated one with 128 mb VRAM, and the game runs smoother on hers. She's at 30 FPS while I drop to 3... And it used to run fine...

I don't know what else to do...

 

[DSzymborski]

Thanks for your answer

I'm just really confused cause I play AOE 2 Definitive edition with my wife. Her laptop is even older than mine, doesn't even have dedicated GPU just integrated one with 128 mb VRAM, and the game runs smoother on hers. She's at 30 FPS while I drop to 3... And it used to run fine...

I don't know what else to do...

I can't say anything about your wife's laptop vs. yours as I know nothing about your wife's laptop.

As I said, it appears you have a problem. I only said that it's almost certainly not a VRAM issue. From what you describe, I think you have a more generalized hardware problem.