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I would like to increase the VRAM in my Mac mini Late 2012. I read on a couple of websites that upgrading the RAM will increase the VRAM. However, I upgraded from 4 GB of RAM to 16 GB which did not affect the VRAM, which is still at 1536 MB.

Is there a way to increase the VRAM?

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  • Unless you know that all the VRAM is being used, and that more VRAM would improve something, then I'm not sure what this would achieve. The 2012 Mini has a very weak Intel GPU, and that's likely to be the main problem, and not one easily fixable.
    – benwiggy
    Commented Dec 1, 2019 at 11:30

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You can indeed increase the amount of VRAM in certain Apple models. In fact, you have already done that for 1 or 2 times.

  • 2012 Mac Mini 4GB allocated 768MB to VRAM in it's original release state. Upgrading the RAM back in 2012 to 8GB would have given you 1024MB. Keeping the RAM at 4GB but upgrading to OSX 10.9 would also resulted in 1024MB. Following your claim that you have 1536MB available this might be the result of either OSX 10.9.3 or because of the 2nd 8GB. I don't know. I probably still have a 2012 Mac Mini somewhere in the cupboard and will test this soon.
  • 2013/2014 MBA and MBPr models came with 1024MB out of the box. This was also increased to 1536MB after installing OSX 10.9.3

There might be more models that have received a free VRAM upgrade in the past but I have no direct records of these.

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  • Ok but I can not increase it any further, right?
    – LinusG.
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 8:22
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    Chances are low that Apple will bring out another software upgrade to do this. There is no good reason to do this (includes but not limited to commercial) . On top of that, the graphic chipset is too old to spend any Apple resources on.
    – EDP
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 11:49
  • OK but terminal-wise I cannot do anything?
    – LinusG.
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 18:30
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    It cannot be changed terminal-wise, nor terminal-ish. And it's not terminal-able either.
    – EDP
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 6:48
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    How about terminalogically?
    – LinusG.
    Commented Jan 24, 2016 at 6:55
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VRAM is only included on dedicated graphics cards. On other computers (such as the Mac mini), the OS reserves a portion of RAM for use with an integrated graphics processor. There's no way to adjust this. Some Macs will adjust the amount of VRAM they use dynamically, but there's still a maximum amount it will use, and you can't change that.

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  • Not even terminal-ish?
    – LinusG.
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 6:31
  • @LinusG. Nope. Can't be done.
    – William T Froggard
    Commented Jan 23, 2016 at 6:31

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