how do I determine how much VRAM is in the system?

I just bought a Samsung Series 7 laptop but I have no idea how much VRAM the graphics card has. This is an NVIDIA OPTIMUS card. I am using Windows 7 and will upgrade to 8 within the hour.

I switched from Mac to PC. So its not familiar to me. I am sorry that you guys know where to look and think this question is very trivial. Someone is selling me his laptop and claims it has 1GB VRAM. The stock # says it should have 512MB and I wanted to verify these details.

4 Answers

Since you have an Nvidia card, you should be able to get that information from the Nvidia control panel.

1. Right-click on the desktop and choose NVIDIA Control Panel to bring it up (or go into the start menu).
2. Go to the Help -> System Information menu.
3. Look at the Dedicated video memory in the Display tab under the Details list.

Alternatively if for whatever reason you don't have that available to you, you can look at the system information to get the numbers.

1. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog and enter: msinfo32.
2. Then view the System Summary -> Components -> Display view and look for the Adapter RAM. You'll find the ram size there.

You should run

dxdiag 

in the search right on top of the start menu (Run input field) . Or you can install somethin like AIDA64 (Everest) that will scan the hardware and give you detailled information about every component on your PC. You can find the video card utilisation under

Display -> GPU

You'll be able to see on your right complete information about your video card and even see the current utilization. Just start a game to see how much memories it takes to run it live.

GPU-Z should also be able to help:

Where in that picture does it say vram? Why not explain it for people who are new to gaming and the lingo who are trying to learn these things but the internet is bulging with info just not the information needed. It has many answers but not the one that answers the question when you need it. Oh and there are many pages that look like the answer but when you click on it it is completely different content its a good thing a danger warning pops up for me but it add to the frustration.