Envy x360 vram memory disapointment, and miss-guided product discription.

[DarranD]

So I just bought this computer as a replacement upgrade for an older verion of the Envy 360. Both of em use the AMD APU, the new one is using the much faster Ryzen APU. Here's the major problem and I would like to return the product because of this..., The new Envy has only 256mb of vram, the old one has 512mb. Because of the that all the content creation software I use, Photohshop, 3dsmax, and Substance Painter, do not fuction well. Photoshop requires a minimum of 512mb to use the gpu enhanced interface. Substance Painter now constanly get's corruped video memory in the display of what I'm working on. 3dsmax viewports have a serious dedgridation in the quality of the display, making it harder to use. Now on my older Envy computer those programs all work without those issues.

Now I know APU's they share there sytem memory with the cpu and gpu, so even though I got an memory upgrade to 16gb, I didn't get any upgrade to vram. The way APU's work is that there's a setting in the bio's that allocates memory to the vram, and after checking I see there's no access to that. I tried support, and I was told I needed to buy a better computer.

No where on the product page of the Envy x360 z15 is the vram mb listed, it only mentions the cash size, and that it's Vega graphics. I feel like I was miss informed.

I bought this computer as an upgrade, but for me it's really a downgrade. I bought the computer on march 23, it was shipped march 31, I recieved it april 6th, now today I want to return it (april 19) but it's telling me it's not eligible for return.

Please help, either improve my vram memory by changing the setting in the bio's or let me return this product as now it's just usless to me. I would even consider store credit.

[banhien]

@DarranD

There are few things I would like to add:

1.  >>> so even though I got an memory upgrade to 16gb, I didn't get any upgrade to vram

It does. Windows will automatically add more available system RAM to VRAM. With 16GB you can get to max supported. We can't control this.

2.  >>> No where on the product page of the Envy x360 z15 is the vram mb listed

It (they actually because 15z is a reries of many machines) can have many options/configurations. HP won't list VRAM because depending on APU. They use  AMD Ryzen™ 5 2500U Processor (4C/8T, 6MB cache, 3.6GHz Boost) with Radeon™ Vega 8 Graphics. AMD does not publish this

         https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-5-2500u

New GPU is much faster than old GPU. I don't know how much RAM on your machine now but adding more RAM will help.

Regards.

[DarranD]

Vram is allocated in the bios, it's a simple setting. That's how the APU's work.  Please understand what that means as that is the most important part of this whole coversation. So it dosen't matter how much memory I have, the setting in the bios determines how much will be used for the vram. 

Even though there are different models they all have a setting and that setting is a true account for how much physcial memory the gpu will have access to. HP corporate has really screwed this up and because of that I was not propporly informed of what I was buying, as it looks it's really a big downgrade.

also 16gb is the maximum available for system memory.

This is a better machiene, but it's a race horse that's been cutt off at the knees, because the vram which was 515mb in the previous generation is now only 256mb in the new generation. 

Because of that video displays will have to deal with poor graphic quality even though the frame rate might be high. 

I can't use this computer for anything work related because of the low vram memory. It's only good for browsing the web, and playing simple games. I bought as an upgrade and that computer works fine, this new computer is useless.

Please let me return it!!! I'm begging....

[DarranD]

Here's a link to the computer I bought,

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-envy-x360-convertible-laptop-15z-touch-1za07av-1

I

[banhien]

@DarranD

I know, my previous reply used information from that page. It has option to buy 16GB of RAM

Regards.