Is it possible to assign more video memory in VirtualBox?

Question

I am currently using VirtualBox to run a Fedora 15 VM. While changing my settings, I allocated 128MB of video memory, as well as enabling 3D acceleration.

Is there any way to assign more video memory? If not, why is it limited to 128MB?

Answer 1

You can do it from the command line. This example will increase the video memory to 256MB:

<~> $ vbm showvminfo WinXP-SP3 | grep VRAM
VRAM size:       128MB

<~> $ vbm modifyvm WinXP-SP3 --vram 256

<~> $ vbm showvminfo WinXP-SP3 | grep VRAM
VRAM size:       256MB

Answer 2

The upper limit provided by VirtualBox is 256Mb, regardless of the capability of your host hardware/GPU.

For example running:

vboxmanage modifyvm MyVMBoxName --vram 1024

Gives this error:

VBoxManage: error: Invalid VRAM size: 1024 MB (must be in range [1, 256] MB)
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG (0x80070057), component SessionMachine, interface IMachine, callee nsISupports
Context: "COMSETTER(VRAMSize)(ValueUnion.u32)" at line 417 of file VBoxManageModifyVM.cpp

Would be great if there was a way to assign more video memory to a VM as my Win7 use is pretty extensive e.g. for Photoshop.