HT204349: About integrated video on Intel-based Macs

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Peer83
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Q: will the allocated memory of the intel HD 4000 rise when I update the memory to 16GB?

As in the topic, is it useful for the graphic performance to upgrade with that much memory?

MacBook Pro, HD4000

Posted on Jul 2, 2012 11:56 PM

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Peer83

Q: will the allocated memory of the intel HD 4000 rise when I update the memory to 16GB?

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  • by mende1,

    mende1 mende1 Jul 2, 2012 11:59 PM in response to Peer83
    Level 10 (93,329 points)
    Desktops
    Jul 2, 2012 11:59 PM in response to Peer83

    Welcome to Apple Communities

     

    No. The video memory doesn't change when you upgrade RAM

  • by clintonfrombirmingham,

    clintonfrombirmingham clintonfrombirmingham Jul 3, 2012 12:02 AM in response to Peer83
    Level 7 (30,009 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 3, 2012 12:02 AM in response to Peer83

    Here's an article benchmarking the 4000 with Windows 7 and 16GB of RAM - I don't know how much VRAM the GPU actually can grab from RAM: maybe someone else would know?

     

    Clinton

  • by Peer83,

    Peer83 Peer83 Jul 3, 2012 12:30 AM in response to mende1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 3, 2012 12:30 AM in response to mende1

    upgrading from 4 to 8 GB of RAM makes a difference,

     

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3246#intel4000

     

    why should this stop at 8GB...

  • by Lexiepex,

    Lexiepex Lexiepex Jul 3, 2012 12:45 AM in response to Peer83
    Level 6 (10,536 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 3, 2012 12:45 AM in response to Peer83

    There is no reason for stopping at 8GB. In the HD4000 is either 500GB or 1GB depending on the model.

    RAM is used by the applications, the more Ram the less necessity to buffer on the disk (Activity Monitor, pageins and pageouts), which takes time on an standard harddrive; on an SSD it will take time for the Trim and/or Garbage Collection, which means wear. High amount of ram makes ram-hungry applications run much faster.

    There is one thing to consider also: when the hibernatemode is set to 3 (default) everytime the mac goes to sleep the Ram is completely copied to the disk, so a 16GB ram means a sleepimage file of 16GB ! This large file you find in the root of your disk (hidden file). If you have a small HDD/SSD it makes sense to set the hibernatemode to 0, which eliminates the writing of the sleepimage, and delete the sleepimage. Terminal commands.