HP 17-ca1211ng No BIOS setting for shared video-RAM 2 GB RAM permanently blocked / wasted

[Steffen_Gans]

Hello Dear HP support team,

I have a bug to report or a feature request.

On my new HP 17-ca1211ng there is no BIOS setting to adjust the amount of RAM that is reserved for the integrated graphics of the AMD Ryzen APU. This wouldn't be a problem if the default value was set to a reasonable value. But instead the setting is fixed to block 2 GB RAM (of total 8 GB) that can not be used by the operating system or applications - Windows can only use 5,9 GB of RAM. Same in Linux, obviously.

As I never intend to use the laptop for gaming I will never use that much video RAM. One could say that one fourth of the (non-expandable) RAM is wasted. And even for gaming purposes, reserving 2 GB wouldn't make any sense. There is a nice techspot-article about this: https://www.techspot.com/article/1578-amd-raven-ridge-reserved-memory-explainer/ tl-dr of this article: Reserving 2 GB of RAM for the Ryzen/Vega APU doesn't make any sense. Not even for gaming as there is no measurable performance gain, but outside of gaming you lose a lot of RAM that could be better used for the operating system of applications.

I would like to propose that HP should publish a BIOS-update to allow users to set the amount of RAM reserved for the integrated graphics. Or at least drastically reduce the pre-set number to a much lower value. For example 256 MB.

Best regards,

Steffen_Gans

[praveen196]

@Steffen_Gans Welcome to HP Community!

HP has locked a few settings on your computer which are being managed by the system configuration as the device is configured to its optimal performance. 

  

There's no way of resetting or changing these locked settings via HP articles or assistance, 

You could unlock and make changes at your own discretion using 3rd party tools, however, HP doesn't recommend the same nor has information about the tools used. 

I hope you understand. 

Keep us posted,
If you would like to thank us for our efforts to help you, 

Give us a virtual high-five by clicking the 'Thumbs Up' icon below, followed by clicking on the "Accept as solution" on this post, 

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[Steffen_Gans]

Thank you for your reply.

Imagine buying a laptop with 8 GB RAM but having only <6 GB available. The other 2 GB just sit there doing nothing ever. I would not call this "configured to its optimal performance". In contrary, this settings limits the performance of the computer. Noticeably so when the operating system starts "swapping" to the hard disk when running out of RAM.

There is no third party software that could change this setting.

I am convinced that hard-coding the graphics memory to the large number of 2 GB in the BIOS was a mistake and the developers should be made aware, so they can fix it and release a BIOS-update.

The number should either be controllable by the user (like in most other brands of PCs or laptops) or lowered to a more reasonable value. Like the linked techspot article describes, there is next to no performace gain from reserving 2GB RAM for graphics - in 3D-games - which is not the main purpose of the 17-ca1211ng. In non-gaming usage, performance is even degraded as described above. The number could be set as low as possible because in a setup like this where the GPU "borrows" memory from the RAM there is no difference in speed between VRAM and regular RAM. So even if the BIOS setting was for example as low as 128 MB, data from 3D-games could be loaded into the non-reserved (regular) RAM without sacrificing speed.

But I repeat: If you don't play games you lose performance as soon as you start using more than 6 GB RAM. Which wouldn't be necessary in a system with 8 GB installed - if just HP had configured in a better way.

[praveen196]

@Steffen_Gans

I understand your concerns. As of now, there is no BIOS update is available to edit.

Please let me know if you have any other concerns.

Keep us posted,
If you would like to thank us for our efforts to help you, 

Give us a virtual high-five by clicking the 'Thumbs Up' icon below, followed by clicking on the "Accept as solution" on this post, 

Have a great day!

[Rufus5]

Hi, 

I experience same problem with Athlon 300U-based machine, 2x4Gb RAM. 
Interesting fact I noticed: with just a single 4Gb memory module installed only 512Mb of RAM is reserved for GPU which is acceptable amount. But if I put in another 4Gb memory module, VRAM grows to 2Gb. 

So to me it looks like there is no real reason to have 2Gb reseved, and this is a bug in HP BIOS setup. Making it configurable sounds like a solution, even BIOS config entry with two options -- "512MB" and "AUTO" -- will work here. 

Best, 

R

[Steffen_Gans]

@Praveen196 Thank you for your reply. I am aware that there is no BIOS update available at the moment. This needs to change 🙂 And HP developers are the only ones who can.

Would you please forward the issue to a technical support agent who could look into the issue from a more technical viewpoint? Who at HP would be responsible for such an issue and I could I contact the responsible department directly?

[praveen196]

@Steffen_Gans

I understand your concerns. In this case, I would suggest you contact phone support.

Here is how you can get in touch with phone support.

1)Click on this link - www.hp.com/contacthp/

2)Select the product type.

3)Enter the serial number of your device or select let HP detect your product option.

4)Select the country from the drop-down.

5)You should see the HP phone support number or Chat option listed.

Keep us posted,
If you would like to thank us for our efforts to help you, 

Give us a virtual high-five by clicking the 'Thumbs Up' icon below, followed by clicking on the "Accept as solution" on this post, 

Have a great day!

[Rufus5]

Hi Praveen196, 

I'm sorry to interrupt but I've tried to contact both phone and chat support, their only solution was this forum. 

[praveen196]

@Rufus5

You may respond to the private message I've sent out and I'll help you out, accordingly.

Please provide your region.

Keep us posted,
If you would like to thank us for our efforts to help you, 

Give us a virtual high-five by clicking the 'Thumbs Up' icon below, followed by clicking on the "Accept as solution" on this post, 

Have a great day!

[Rufus5]

@Praveen196

I see no private messages in my inbox.