2020 MacBook Pro 13 (i5-1038NG7) Maximum Video RAM

[tzevoon]

Can anyone who has the new 2020 MacBook Pro (i5-1038NG7) share the video memory that’s available?

I’m thinking to customise it to 32GB. Since the video RAM is shared with the main memory, does more RAM give more video RAM? Or is there a cap to the video ram regardless of the main memory.

 

[AjTee]

This is in polish, but as you can see it has 1536 MB of VRAM memory.

 

[tzevoon]

This is in polish, but as you can see it has 1536 MB of VRAM memory.
View attachment 943382

Thank you very much for the screenshot. Is your machine 16GB RAM?

 

[AjTee]

Yes it is 16 GB RAM.

 

[tzevoon]

Yes it is 16 GB RAM.

Thank you!

 

[AjTee]

No problem.

 

[antipodean]

Can anyone who has the new 2020 MacBook Pro (i5-1038NG7) share the video memory that’s available?

I’m thinking to customise it to 32GB. Since the video RAM is shared with the main memory, does more RAM give more video RAM? Or is there a cap to the video ram regardless of the main memory.

I have 32GB RAM / i7 and the vRAM is the same as shown above, i.e. 1536MB. I use an eGPU with 8GB to drive an external 4k, but even without the eGPU I found no problem with the Intel GPU for day-to-day stuff.

 

[Forti]

I have 32GB RAM / i7 and the vRAM is the same as shown above, i.e. 1536MB. I use an eGPU with 8GB to drive an external 4k, but even without the eGPU I found no problem with the Intel GPU for day-to-day stuff.

Just curious - what eGPU you have? I'm thinking about one. Currently I'm using MBP 13" 2018 with one 4k display. With second 4k display I can see a significant performance reduction (mostly in UI, animations etc, even in claimshell mode).

 

[antipodean]

Just curious - what eGPU you have? I'm thinking about one. Currently I'm using MBP 13" 2018 with one 4k display. With second 4k display I can see a significant performance reduction (mostly in UI, animations etc, even in claimshell mode).

Just an older Black Magic Design unit (the original with a 580). It runs QUIET, even under full load. Running the Unigine Heaven benchmark on loop (which doesn't stress the CPU that much), the system fans stayed at 0 rpm and the eGPU remains virtually silent.

I looked into the more popular Razer Core X + 5700XT option, but decided for the time being to wait it out. It's hard to tell from anecdotal reports, but I have the impression that the Razer Core would be noisy compared with the Black Magic unit. I'm happy with the improvement the 580 provides relative to the intel integrated GPU and the essentially silent operation.

I really hope Black Magic releases a 5700-based version of their eGPU that also runs quiet. I would be very tempted by that.

 

[tzevoon]

I have 32GB RAM / i7 and the vRAM is the same as shown above, i.e. 1536MB. I use an eGPU with 8GB to drive an external 4k, but even without the eGPU I found no problem with the Intel GPU for day-to-day stuff.

What is your day-to-day use?

For me, I use Google Earth Pro, DraftSight (CAD) and QGIS a lot.

On my 2013 MacBook Air, I start to notice deteriorating performance, especially Google Earth Pro. Most of the time, my fans are maxed out when running Google Earth Pro. So I was just wondering if it's GPU issues and if more RAM equates to more Video RAM. Looks like it's not...

My MBA specs
1.3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536 MB
1TB Adata SX8200 (self-upgraded)
macOS Catalina 10.15.4

 

[Patcell]

I have wondered about this myself... all else being equal (i.e. 13" MBP with i5 1038NG7) does an increase from 16GB RAM to 32GB RAM make a difference for the integrated GPU? It appears that the system limits the iGP to a 1.5GB frame buffer regardless of total system RAM capacity. I would imagine that memory bandwidth - rather that amount of RAM set aside for the iGP - would be more of a bottleneck in this situation. Although, if the iGP were making use of the entire 1.5GB maximum, then the 16GB system would have only 14.5GB left, whereas the 32GB system would have 30.5GB remaining for general use memory...

 

[SkiHound2]

Can anyone who has the new 2020 MacBook Pro (i5-1038NG7) share the video memory that’s available?

I’m thinking to customise it to 32GB. Since the video RAM is shared with the main memory, does more RAM give more video RAM? Or is there a cap to the video ram regardless of the main memory.

For a lot of things you want the gpu to have access to quite a bit of ram. Macos does a really good job of managing memory efficiently. It's why 8gb works fine for the majority of users.

Does anyone know if they allocate more vram dynamically depending on pressure on different resources?

 

[Yebubbleman]

Can anyone who has the new 2020 MacBook Pro (i5-1038NG7) share the video memory that’s available?

I’m thinking to customise it to 32GB. Since the video RAM is shared with the main memory, does more RAM give more video RAM? Or is there a cap to the video ram regardless of the main memory.

I'm pretty sure it's 1.5GB shared on both the i5 and i7 and regardless of whether you have 16GB or 32GB of system RAM.

That said, it will be a vast improvement in terms of graphics performance from your 2013 MacBook Air's Haswell i5.