OS X 10.9.3 Boosts Maximum VRAM of Recent Retina MacBook Pro and MacBook Air Models

Essentially, nothing. Your games will look pretty much the same. More memory helps to store information on the video RAM, so you can have more resolution but not necessarily more speed.

Not quite.

To store a single frame buffer at 1920x1200x32 resolution requires slightly less than 9Mbyte. Triple buffered graphics use the better part of 32Mbyte.

Upping that to 4K requires less than 128Mbyte. I think I do have a 128Mbyte USB stick somewhere with some DOS software demo on it. From 15 years ago.

Or in other words: If you'd use the full 1.5Gbyte as frame buffer you'd end up with a 25820x14524 resolution. No 4K, no 8K, but 25K.

The rest of your VRAM is actually used to do offscreen rendering of new windows, and in case of games, storing textures. More textures in VRAM means less time spent swapping textures around when you move through the game and thus some performance benefits.

Then again, modern CPU's are so fast the penalty of decompressing and swapping textures is minimal and you won't notice much difference unless you're running a specialist benchmark designed to show the effect.

I have a 2012 Mac mini with HD Graphics 4000 and I've went from 768MB to 1GB with the update, so it's not necessarily because of 4k support.

Good point, but do you happen to know how IGP releases memory? For instance, if a Mac is connected to 4K monitor and it is currently using 1.5GB RAM, does it release the memory immediately if OS X is running out of RAM for application processes?

I don't know the details, but I imagine applications can't force the IGP to release memory since if the IGP is actually using it that could cause graphical corruption. The IGP should be releasing RAM back to the system when it's no longer needed.

Mavericks also added support for compressed memory though so if system RAM is running low, Mavericks will compress the least frequently used data in RAM (while still keeping it resident in RAM) which can be around 50% efficient. So a Mavericks Mac with 4 GB of RAM can have 6GB of effective memory and 8 GB of RAM has about 12 GB of effective memory. Once Mavericks has compressed as much memory as possible it'll start swapping to disk as usual.

[url=https://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image (https://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/20/10-9-3-maximum-vram-increase/)[/url]

Update 12:45 PM PT: As noted by forum member SmileyDude (https://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=19126851&postcount=13), some machines with HD 4000 graphics have seen a VRAM boost as well, namely the 2012 Mac Mini, which now has a maximum VRAM of 1024GB, up from 768MB.

(Thanks, Peter!)

Article Link: OS X 10.9.3 Boosts Maximum VRAM of Recent Retina MacBook Pro and MacBook Air Models (https://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/20/10-9-3-maximum-vram-increase/)

Now this is magical.

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Well, .macbookpro. beat me to it

I have a 2012 Mac mini with HD Graphics 4000 and I've went from 768MB to 1GB with the update, so it's not necessarily because of 4k support.

The VRAM on the 2012 mini already went up to 1024MB when Mavericks (10.9) came out. It certainly did with mine and many others on the forum, although that might have been because I run 16GB RAM. Although a member in this post reports it going up with Mavericks 10.9 on just 4GB RAM.

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1658108

In relation to mini owners, you might all just be noticing only now what already happened with Mavericks 10.9 months ago. That is, you had 1024MB all along. :)

which now has a maximum vram of 1024gb, up from 768mb.

holy sheiitttt