How Can I Add More Ram To My Computer

How much memory does my video card have?

Updated: 04/12/2021 by Computer Hope

Dedicated GPUs (graphics processing units) have RAM (random-access memory) used only by the video card. The method of determining how much video RAM the card has depends on the operating system you're using.

Note

If you have onboard (integrated) graphics, such as that provided by Intel, your computer does not have any dedicated video memory. VRAM only comes with a discrete GPU (separate video card).

Windows 10
Windows 8
Windows Vista and Windows 7
Windows XP
macOS X
Linux
Windows and Android, using the utility CPU-Z.

Windows 10

Press the Windows key, type Display settings, and press Enter.
On the left side of the screen, under System, click the Display option.

Windows 10 display tab.

At the bottom of the page, under the Multiple displays section, click Advanced display settings.

Advanced display settings

On the next screen, click Display adapter properties for Display 1 or the adapter you want to view.
In the window that appears, on the Adapter tab, your video card's VRAM is displayed next to Dedicated Video Memory.

Window that shows your video card's ram.

Windows 8

Open the Control Panel.
Select Display.
Select Screen Resolution.
Select Advanced Settings.
Click the Adapter tab if not already selected. The amount of Total Available Graphics Memory and Dedicated Video Memory available on your system is displayed.

Video adapter screen in Windows.

Windows Vista and Windows 7

Press the Windows key, type Control Panel, and then press Enter.
Under the Appearance and Personalization, click Adjust screen resolution.
On the middle of the right side of the screen, click the Advanced settings.
A new window should appear with your video adapter's properties, similar to the image shown below.
Your video card's memory is displayed on the Adapter tab, next to the Dedicated Video Memory entry (shown below).

Display advanced settings

Windows XP

Right-click the desktop and select Properties.
Click the Settings tab.
Click the Advanced button.
Click the Adapter tab.
Your GPU's memory is shown next to the Memory Size entry, under Adapter Information.

macOS X

From the Apple Menu in the upper-left corner of your screen, select About This Mac.
In the Graphics information line, you see details about your graphics hardware, including the amount of video memory.

Linux

On a Linux system, you can see the specifics of your graphics hardware using the command line utility lspci. Follow these steps to find out how much video memory you have.

First, run lspci with no options to list information about all your PCI devices. The line you are looking for is labeled VGA compatible controller.
Make note of the number at the beginning of this line. This number is the domain identifier for that PCI device, and we use it in the next step to get more detailed information. In this example, our VGA controller's ID number is 00:02.0.
Run lspci again, with the options -v -s domain-id. The -v specifies that we want verbose (detailed) information, and the -s specifies that we want information only about the device number domain-id. In our example, the domain ID is 00:02.0, so we run the command lspci -v -s 00:02.0 to get more details.
The output of the command looks like the screenshot below. The line you're looking for is prefetchable memory, the video RAM.

In this example, there is 256 MB of video RAM.

Windows and Android, using the utility CPU-Z

CPU-Z is a free utility for Windows and Android that provides detailed system information, including the amount of video RAM. Follow the steps below to determine how much video memory your video adapter has.

Download and install CPU-Z
Open CPU-Z.
Click the Graphics tab.
Locate the Memory section. The amount of video memory is displayed next to Size, as shown in the image below.

CPU-Z video card and memory information