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Does Linux (Ubuntu in particular) support Intel DVMT?

I've Intel i5-2500K, 8GB RAM with NO graphics card. It has inbuilt 32MB dedicated graphics memory.

In my Windows OS, graphics memory is dynamically allocated from RAM (which goes up-to 1.7GB) and most of the games works fairly well at low FPS. As Ubuntu is in a way to become a gaming platform, I would like to know weather Intel DVMT is supported.

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I do not know about actual support, but if the question is whether memory is allocated to the graphics, then at least on my laptop with Intel i3 processor and HD4000 graphics that does happen.

On Ubuntu 12.10 and 1.8 GiB of my total RAM is always reserved for the graphics (unfortunately leaving only 2.1 GiB of memory to use). I have not seen any sign of it changing dynamically, ever.

The behaviour on Ubuntu seems to match the behaviour on Windows 7 (on Windows 7, the Resource Monitor reports 1853 MB of being "Hardware Reserved").

My laptop BIOS does not have settings related to this, so I have no control over this. Personally I would like to allocate less memory to the graphics, since currently it only leaves 2.1 GiB to use.

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  • Does it have settings for Video memory?
    – Uri Herrera
    Jan 28, 2013 at 16:38
  • No, BIOS has no settings related to this. This might be just my laptop's thing (Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E330, BIOS is up-to-date).
    – pileofrocks
    Jan 28, 2013 at 16:45
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    Indeed, not all OEMs allow modification of such settings. If there's not option in the BIOS this can't be modified.
    – Uri Herrera
    Jan 28, 2013 at 16:49
  • @pileofrocks - How to see amount of memory reserved for graphics?
    – user110837
    Jan 29, 2013 at 14:41
  • @NikhilDamle For me this is shown as kernel messages, e.g. dmesg | grep intel.*map.
    – gertvdijk
    Jan 29, 2013 at 14:59

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