This category includes all physical memory which is exclusively owned by the graphics device itself, such that if the graphics device was removed this memory would also no longer be available. It is important to note that dedicated memory is not necessarily totally unaccessible to other parts of the system, as graphics devices commonly have ways of mapping at least parts of their dedicated memory in a manner that makes it accessible to the rest of the system, to help facilitate data transfers, but if the graphics device physically holds or contains the memory, or is exclusively responsible for making it available to other devices in the system, the memory is considered dedicated memory.

Shared memory is any memory which is not exclusively owned by the graphics device. Integrated graphics devices typically make extensive use of shared memory, such as being apportioned a section of general system memory by the memory controller in a fixed manner, or in a configurable manner via the BIOS. Note however that integrated devices may also have dedicated physical memory on-die. Under some system environments, dedicated graphics devices also make extensive or exclusive use of shared memory. This has occurred on some major game console such as the original Xbox, and is also common on mobile and embedded systems, however generally discrete graphics devices will make use of dedicated memory, as this is often capable of yielding better rendering performance, perhaps with a trade-off of increased times upload data to the graphics device.