Comments on Lenovo ThinkBook 13s review – competitive 13-inch ultrabook (Core i5, UHD 620)

By: Andrei Girbea

2019-11-04T15:29:22Z

I find the 8 GB of RAM with shared graphics good enough for daily use and multitasking. But yes, if you open many tabs in Chrome and other apps on the side, it might not suffice.

By: bittricks

2019-11-04T13:47:20Z

In reply to Andrei Girbea.

Tnanks Andrei,

I've seen systems where, under the System control panel, it reports, for example:

5.96 GB (usabled) [out of 8 GB]

without explanation.

I know why this is… the "missing" 2.04 GB [out of 8 GB] is being assigned or committed to the integrated graphics via shared memory.

What's baffling to me is that no one really seems to know – not even Intel's and AMD's own technical support – nor OEM support – know if that 2.04 GB shared memory is made available to applications or not when the integrated graphics isn't using it.

Generally, with non-gaming laptops there is no control exposed in the BIOS to modify the shared memory values. What you got from the factory is what you got to work with.

I mean let's face it… a system advertised with 8 GB RAM (but 2 GB is committed to integrated graphics and completely unavailable to the OS\applications) is misleading at best.

Heck, with only 6 GB available to the OS\applications, just launch any browser, open a few tabs, and you're already consuming 4+ GB within minutes. Launch more applications, and you've exceeded 6 GB and the memory fall-over heads to the pagefile which grinds the harddrive.

By: Andrei Girbea

2019-11-04T13:05:43Z

In reply to bittricks.

That's a good question. As far as I know, memory is virtually allocated to the iGPU based on demand, which means it should use more than the 6 you are mentioning with daily use.

By: bittricks

2019-11-04T12:24:11Z

For a system such as this, does anyone know if applications can access the memory committed to the graphics when that graphics-committed memory is not in-use ?

For example, there is shared memory. 5.96 GB is identified as "usable" by the OS and the remainder is committed to the graphics.

There is no way in the BIOS to modify this 6 GB OS\2 GB OS graphics.

Can the OS\applications access that 2 GB of shared graphics memory when the integrated graphics is not using it ? AMD, for example, is famous for taking 2 GB out of installed physical RAM, reserving it for their graphics card, and therefore the OS reports usable RAM is only 6 GB.

Funny enough, but search the web far-and-wide, contact OEMs, contact the graphics manufacturer's own technical support… and I cannot get an answer.