How to achieve gpu_mem=8?

Question

I see some people claiming (see links) they have a memory splitting of gpu_mem=8, but I always thought 16/496 is the minimum split?

• Here is an answer on this very page: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/12913/14614
• Here is a status page I found from someone I found via Google: http://pi.gids.nl:81/piwww/
• In this official forum thread: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=70437

I tried setting it to gpu_mem=8 on my Pi, it boots just fine, but running

vcgencmd get_mem arm
vcgencmd get_mem gpu

still gives

arm=496M
gpu=16M

So on any value below 16 the Pi seems to default to 16. Is there any benefit/drawback when using gpu_mem=8 or is there a way to really get to 8/504?

Answer 1

The minimum amount of RAM allocated to the GPU has a recommended lower limit of 16MB. This is due to the build of the Raspberry Pi itself.