GPU memory amount needed for dual 1080p screens in Windows 10? No gaming.

[Eug]

I'm curious, what is the recommended memory amount needed for Windows 10 dual screen usage, for say 2 x 1920x1080 screens? This is for an extended desktop with office application usage and 1080p video playback, including Blu-ray. No 3D gaming.

The reason I ask is because I have two systems with shared system memory for the GPU. On one system I set it at 128 MB out of 3 GB but I have the option to go as high as 256 MB. I've played Blu-ray on that system and it worked fine. That seems to match the system requirements that Cyberlink has for 2D Blu-ray, where they suggest 256 MB RAM.

http://www.cyberlink.com/stat/bd-support/enu/system-requirement.jsp

However, when I tried Blu-ray on that, it was only a single screen. What about dual screens? I'm not talking dual 1080p videos. I'm just talking about playing a single 1080p video on one screen while working in say Office on the other.

On my laptop with Intel GMA4500HD, it's locked to 64 MB (and I can't change it), out of the 4 GB memory there. That seems too small to me. I'm sure it's fine for its built-in 768p screen, but I've run into problems playing video out of its HDMI port, and I'm thinking it's due to the GPU memory limitations. I could play video on the primary screen or the HDMI, but could not do it on both at the same time. I suppose it could be related to driver issues but I'd guess it's due to the very little GPU RAM present. Note that I've used Windows spanned across the built-in 768p monitor and an external 1280x1024 monitor no problem over VGA, and even played a 720p video on that and it worked fine.

I see online that someone wrote a BIOS hack for that laptop that allows increasing the GPU memory allocation, but I'm not sure I want to go there.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Next to nothing, the frame buffers is about all that is stuffed into vRAM when using the desktop and windows 10 is really no worse for memory usage than any other modern OS.

1080p decoding/playback is generally speaking done on the fly on the GPU when acceleration is used so it's not heavy on memory usage, generally speaking media players have really small buffers for media - on my system a large 1080p mkv at about 20Gb makes my mem usage (as given in MSI afterburner) a 40mb increase when using VLC player.

If you're talking about GPUs that are built into the motherboard of something like a laptop, and they borrow system RAM to use as their memory then you might find these GPUs to simply be lacking in raw horsepower to decode full 1080p bluray media, they might not even be suitable for hardware playback and your media player may fall back to using the CPU instead.

Are you saying that you're cloning the screen on the laptop and one is going out through the HDMI cable to a TV or some other screen? If the screen is set to clone and the resolution is the same then there should be next to no decrease in performance when decoding because the leg work is done during the decoding part which is done once despite having 2 screens, the scaling and output to 2 interfaces is trivial in comparison. Odds are that's either a driver issue or a media player issue.

What media player are you using? Try installing VLC and flipping through the different output types, it can decode in many different formats like D3D, OpenGL, DirectDraw, etc.

 

[Eug]

1080p decoding/playback is generally speaking done on the fly on the GPU when acceleration is used so it's not heavy on memory usage, generally speaking media players have really small buffers for media - on my system a large 1080p mkv at about 20Gb makes my mem usage (as given in MSI afterburner) a 40mb increase when using VLC player.

Well, 40 MB seems to be significant then, given that my laptop maxes out at 64 MB.

If you're talking about GPUs that are built into the motherboard of something like a laptop, and they borrow system RAM to use as their memory then you might find these GPUs to simply be lacking in raw horsepower to decode full 1080p bluray media, they might not even be suitable for hardware playback and your media player may fall back to using the CPU instead.

Yes, both are on board GPU using system RAM.

One of the systems is ION, and I know for a fact that it plays Blu-ray fine, since I've tested (non-3D) Blu-ray on it with PowerDVD 10. However, I have that one currently set at 128 MB and I think when I was using it to play Blu-ray it had been set at 256 MB, which just so happens to be what Cyberlink recommends for (non-3D) Blu-ray. Also, that was on one screen and no other screens attached.

The other system is GMA4500HD which also is Blu-ray compatible, but I haven't tried a Blu-ray with it. This is the machine that is limited to 64 MB for the GPU (locked in the BIOS), but way back when on Win 7 when I tried outputting a 1080p file over HDMI, it'd black out the main screen. Maybe that was a driver issue, cuz I haven't tried again in Win 7. I'll go test that out. However, the 64 MB limit concerns me.

Are you saying that you're cloning the screen on the laptop and one is going out through the HDMI cable to a TV or some other screen? If the screen is set to clone and the resolution is the same then there should be next to no decrease in performance when decoding because the leg work is done during the decoding part which is done once despite having 2 screens, the scaling and output to 2 interfaces is trivial in comparison. Odds are that's either a driver issue or a media player issue.

Can't remember actually, but I believe I was trying to clone through the HDMI cable but the native screen would just get blacked out.

What media player are you using? Try installing VLC and flipping through the different output types, it can decode in many different formats like D3D, OpenGL, DirectDraw, etc.

Was using Windows Media Player with Haali Media Splitter and AC3filter, playing 1080p H.264 files. I know this combo works via VGA to a 1280x1024 screen in Win 10 playing 720p files, with just 64 MB. I'll try again in Win 10 with an HD monitor and a 1080p file, because I've not tried that. (Only installed Win 10 last week.)

However, I just came across this Adobe page. They recommend at least 128 MB VRAM for Photoshop.

http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331412.html?PID=5157839

And I just came across this page too, which is an old Aero system requirements page:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows7/what-is-the-aero-desktop-experience



Your computer's hardware and video card must meet hardware requirements to able to display Aero graphics. Check that your computer meets the minimum hardware requirements for running Aero:

1-gigahertz (GHz) 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 gigabyte (GB) of random access memory (RAM)

128-megabyte (MB) graphics card

Aero also requires a DirectX 9 class graphics processor that supports a Windows Display Driver Model Driver, Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware, and 32 bits per pixel.

For best results, you might also want to follow these graphics processor recommendations:

64 MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor with a resolution that is less than 1,310,720 pixels (for example, a 17–inch flat panel LCD monitor that has a 1280 × 1024 resolution)

128 MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor with a resolution from 1,310,720 to 2,304,000 pixels (for example, a 21.1–inch flat panel LCD monitor that has up to a 1600 × 1200 resolution)

256 MB of graphics memory to support a single monitor with a resolution greater than 2,304,000 pixels (for example, a 30–inch wide-screen flat panel LCD monitor that has up to a 2560 × 1600 resolution)


I wonder why my manufacturer limited the GPU to 64 MB, given that the laptop has both a VGA output and an HDMI output, and of course has a built-in screen too.

It would have been nice to have options of 128 MB and 256 MB too. In fact, I believe the Intel chipset allows it, but my particular BIOS don't for some reason.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sure that you're not "barking up the wrong tree" here? If you are trying to play 1080P Blu-Ray through HDMI, and it shuts off the secondary display, that may be due to "Protected Video Path" (DRM) issues, which basically says that you are only allowed to output 1080P Blu-Ray through a digital output to a single HDCP-compliant display device.

 

[Eug]

Well, it's a moot point. WinDVD Pro 11 doesn't even run properly on Windows 10, at least not on my machine.

After updating to the latest Service Pack 4 release from October, 2014, it still doesn't work, although now the software says it's for Windows 8 (instead of Windows 7).

I can get DVD to play, but it uses a lot of CPU cycles and can stutter if I do anything else. Blu-ray OTOH won't play at all. It doesn't even start to load. Note that depending upon which list you read, it says either 128 MB RAM or 256 MB RAM is required for Blu-ray playback, but I was sure I got it to play a Blu-ray disc before with my 64 MB RAM (on Windows 7). That was a long time ago though.

BTW, for compatibility, Windows 10 automatically installed DirectPlay.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Sure that you're not "barking up the wrong tree" here? If you are trying to play 1080P Blu-Ray through HDMI, and it shuts off the secondary display, that may be due to "Protected Video Path" (DRM) issues, which basically says that you are only allowed to output 1080P Blu-Ray through a digital output to a single HDCP-compliant display device.

Yeah it could be something like this on reflection.

The simple fact is that if playback is fine on a single screen then having it across 2 screens isn't going to be a problem, as I said before the hard part is the decoding the video stream, actually stuffing that buffer across a cable to whatever output device you want to use requires next to no additional work. I think you're getting unnecessarily distracted with vRAM issues on this.

Try playing other media if you have any, a short but very high quality 1080p mkv would help test, it will come without any DRM that blurays do and it will stress the GPU in a similar way but there's no possibility of multi-screen issues associated with DRM so this will rule out several options if you test.

As I said, try VLC player, it's free, it's small, it's compatible, it's fast, it works in Win10 just fine and has loads of decode options, doesn't require external codecs, it just works.

 

[DustinBrowder]

It shouldn't be more than 20-30mb for really huge files. You can always use software decoding as well.

 

[KingFatty]

Yeah just get a video file that is not protected with digital rights management (DRM). There is that open source video with the chubby bunny, forget the name, but find one that is 1080p just like a blu-ray, but without the DRM.

When you test/troubleshoot, try to isolate separate issues. By using a disc and playing DRM media, you are combining variables so you'll never be able to figure out what the true problem is, whether it's a hardware limitation, a software limitation, or an intended security feature.

Get an unprotected video file, get a player like VLC, and play the video and see what happens with dual screen.