Issues with "reserved memory"

Mr Bolt · 6 Jan 2020 at 15:07

I've just bought a laptop (lenovo s145 AMD Athlon w/ vega graphics) which was on sale and came across a strange memory issue.

it had 3.4GB useable and 600MB hardware reserved which was fine, I threw in another 4GB for a total of 8GB now my issue is that it has 5.9GB usable and 2.1 hardware reserved which i think is a bit much for a built in low end GPU

I've not seen any option in the bios to change the amount i've flashed the bios to hope maybe it would add a setting but that isn't the case and there is still no option.

As suggested by a friend i have changed the MS config to use all ram but that didn't fix the issue

if anyone can suggest something i havn't tried it would be much appreciated

Mcnumpty2323 · 6 Jan 2020 at 15:18

If no option in bios then You may not be able to
Have seen same post from HP owners with AMD
Something to do AGESA I think

hominid · 6 Jan 2020 at 19:41

It's reserving some of the RAM for the graphics, it will always need some RAM for the graphics because it doesn't have a dedicated graphics card. As you've added more RAM the laptop has reserved more to help with better graphics - nothing wrong with it.

b00merang69 · 6 Jan 2020 at 19:45

Even with a proper GPU it has got to reserve something (bit like a page file is needed by some software to work properly even if never used), mines is at 63MB

Mcnumpty2323 · 6 Jan 2020 at 20:14

hominid said:
It's reserving some of the RAM for the graphics, it will always need some RAM for the graphics because it doesn't have a dedicated graphics card. As you've added more RAM the laptop has reserved more to help with better graphics - nothing wrong with it.

Yes they know that

Their issue is that normally you can go in the bios and and alter the amount it's reserving
Usually goes something like
8mb~16mb~32mb~64mb~128mb~256mb
Or similar
They aren't finding that option in the bios which I think is something to do with AMD AGESA
Theirs is reserving over 2gb

Mr Bolt · 6 Jan 2020 at 21:06

hominid said:
It's reserving some of the RAM for the graphics, it will always need some RAM for the graphics because it doesn't have a dedicated graphics card. As you've added more RAM the laptop has reserved more to help with better graphics - nothing wrong with it.

b00merang69 said:
Even with a proper GPU it has got to reserve something (bit like a page file is needed by some software to work properly even if never used), mines is at 63MB

As said above i have no problem with that BUT 2GB is way too much considering this igpu is like half the speed of a GT1030.