I'm looking to play some older video games on my Lenovo IdeaPad 3. It's not a gaming laptop, but I thought it might still work. I checked CanYouRunIt for the games I'm interested in and saw that the only requirement I don't meet is VRAM. It says I need 2048 MB, but when I check my internal monitor settings, it indicates I have 2048 MB. Is this just a rounding issue? By the way, I have an AMD Radeon graphics card and have installed the latest drivers.
3 Answers
You can give it a shot, but since you don't have a dedicated GPU with real VRAM, the CPU is handling the graphics with system RAM. Just keep that in mind when trying to play the game.
It sounds like you might be relying on integrated graphics rather than a separate graphics card. Integrated graphics use a portion of system memory for VRAM, so it's not the same as having dedicated VRAM from a GPU. The 2048MB you're seeing is likely just the system memory being used for graphics. If that's your only limitation, you'd probably still be able to run the game well enough.
Thanks for the insight! I checked the BIOS, but it looks like I can't allocate more RAM for VRAM. At least I can try the game on this laptop, and if it doesn't work out, I can always play it on a different PC later.
Just to clarify, 2GB is the same as 2048MB—it’s not a rounding error. In computer terms, things can get a bit confusing with the units. Just remember that 1024B equals 1kB and so on, which can lead to mix-ups when discussing (V)RAM.
I didn't realize it was so straightforward. It's a bit annoying, but thanks for explaining!
Yeah, that's what I found too. Looks like I can't allocate more RAM just for graphics. Still, I'm going to try playing it. Thanks for the help!