Intel HD Graphics can use 1.7Gb of memory?

I was just wondering how the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD can use up that much memory? Is it built right into the chipset of the i5 or does it get the memory from somewhere else?(Someone said it borrows some of my ram) I do understand that it is a low performance graphics card, so why does it need so much memory? If anyone could explain it to me, or send me a link, that would be great.

A picture to show I'm not completely insane...

 

yes it does borrow it from your RAM.

 

so that you could run crysis or whatever at 1080p, all high, 8xSSAA @ 1 fps instead of crashing

seriously, i have no logical explanation

 

I have no idea why it would ever use that much memory playing games and doubt it ever does. I guess there could be some professional applications that aren't 3d heavy but use massive amounts of video ram but I don't know of any right off (maybe some kind of video editing software). Desktops cards can hardly use more than 1gb today gaming and that is at 2500x1600 with settings maxed.

 

Dedicated gpu's have a hard time using their own VRAM capacity when you are playing demanding games as it is.

This is merely a marketing ploy for the most part.
Integrated gpu's (while certainly capable) are limited in what they can do.
Using more of your system's RAM is not going to really improve things one way or the other because the gpu itself is limited in bandwidth and other aspects.

Contemporary integrated gpu's can run modern games on low settings ... some on medium if I'm not mistaken even (which is dependant on the game's optimization among other things).

But, the fact that the integrated gpu can use up to 1.7 gb of your system's RAM doesn't really say much about it.
It merely deals in 'high' numbers that people who know little about these things will make assumptions that they are getting something powerful.