Valve has developed kernel patches and user-space tools (like dmemcg-booster and plasma-foreground-booster) to prioritize VRAM for foreground games on low-VRAM Linux systems (e.g. 8GB cards), enabling smoother Vulkan/RADV gameplay such as Cyberpunk 2077

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emorockstar@reddit

I wonder if this would help Steam Deck performance too?

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sleepingonmoon@reddit

Steam Deck generally runs things without a desktop so the game isn't competing with anything.

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theillustratedlife@reddit

Considering APUs already use the same RAM chips for both graphics and compute, I doubt it.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

Depends what it does, for example if it can also prioritize foreground processes to be put into RAM and push the background processes into using swap then it can help there too.

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GOKOP@reddit

Have you missed NVIDIA being dragged through mud for still releasing high end cards with 8GB?

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PsyOmega@reddit

nvidia is also making neural textures which can compress up to 3-4x

Their 8gb cards will be able to pack in like 30gb of textures.

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tryfap@reddit

nvidia is also making neural textures which can compress up to 3-4x

This has been announced for years now. It's pointless to talk in the present tense about something that doesn't currently exist. Only then can you really evaluate its effectiveness and how widespread it is. Otherwise, I could just say "who cares about battery hogging apps on my phone, we have graphite batteries, quantum computing, and holograms!"

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PsyOmega@reddit

It does exist.

https://github.com/NVIDIA-RTX/RTXNTC here's the source code.

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tryfap@reddit

That's an SDK. Can you actually name any games where this is currently reducing VRAM usage?

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PsyOmega@reddit

It's a rumored feature of the GTA6 eventual PC release.

The code is on the github to insert into your own game if you desire, or build a demoscene out of it. I don't have the skill for that though.

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F9-0021@reddit

Neural compression is almost certainly going to have some specific hardware requirement that locks it to the 60 series. Even if not, it has enough tensor processing overhead that it will be too heavy to run on lower end cards, especially if you're also using DLSS.

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PsyOmega@reddit

It runs on 50xx

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dRaidon@reddit

Ah yes, sloppify everything.

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PsyOmega@reddit

There's nothing "slop" about neural textures. Think of it as an advanced compression algorithm more than anything else.

It's not a genAI prompt for "make a texture of rust". It's a rust texture with some neural hints for extra pixels, and produces the same outcome every time you render it.

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Coffee_Ops@reddit

If it produces the same outcome, youve invented magical pixie dust compression that obtains 75% size reduction on already-compressed textures.

But that is PR marketing garbage and not how the technology works.

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29da65cff1fa@reddit

middle-out compression

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PsyOmega@reddit

Here's the source code if you doubt it. https://github.com/NVIDIA-RTX/RTXNTC

Here's the whitepaper: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/rtr/neural_texture_compression/assets/ntc_medium_size.pdf

There's nothing magic here, though a lot of AI is starting to border on clarke-tech.

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Helmic@reddit

While this is true, the problem is that it currently takes a ton of compute to decompress. Losing performance to work around the lack of VRAM is frustrating, even if this might eventually mean being able to have very detailed textures.

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CGA1@reddit

Agreeing from my 3050ti 4GB.

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Sjoerd93@reddit

Notebook? Because i think the desktop version has more. But yeah if it’s a laptop, we’ve got the same card.

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PlainBread@reddit

We haven't really been offered more than 8GB without having to pay steep premiums for over a decade.

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Moscato359@reddit

4070 enters the chat

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paskapersepaviaani@reddit

That's low priced??

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Moscato359@reddit

Something doesn't have to be low priced to not be a steep premium.

You can have 3$ burger, 10$ steak, and 100$ steak... just because the 10$ steak isn't 3$, doesn't mean it's 100$.

600$ msrp is not that big of a deal for a very sizeable portion of the population.

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trecko1234@reddit

600$ msrp is not that big of a deal for a very sizeable portion of the population.

Damn dude how out of touch are you?

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Moscato359@reddit

The top 30% income earners won't even have to wince at 600$.

This is an enthusiast hobby.

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23Link89@reddit

Tell me you bought a PC with daddy's money without telling me you bought a PC with daddy's money.

Acting like the insane prices of PC hardware of today is normal is a crazy level of copium. I paid $299 back in 2014 for a GTX 970. A 70 class card for $299. I don't know about you but I don't think the buying power of the dollar has been halved since 2014. In fact $299 in 2014 adjusted for inflation today is a little over $400, not $600.

I don't need to be able to afford it to know it's reasonable, I know what this shit costs because I'm nepo baby larping on the internet.

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Moscato359@reddit

Uhm... I'm 38 and was kicked out of dad's house when I was 22, with nothing, being totally broke, and then never had any financial support from parents

I had to drop out of college to survive.

So you can shut the fuck up about nepo baby.

How are you such an insufferable person? Judging without even knowing. What a disgrace.

Anyways, 1060 was 300$ msrp with 6gb of vram and 4060 was 300$ msrp with 12 gigs of vram.

We had 35% inflation between those 2 dates.

The gpu got cheaper relative to inflation, and still doubled vram.

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PlainBread@reddit

Tech Libertarian.

Zero class consciousness.

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Moscato359@reddit

Very sizeable portion can even be 30%, friend.

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PlainBread@reddit

Did you respond to the correct comment?

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Moscato359@reddit

Yes

You said I don't have class consciousness.

I contend that a significant portion of gamers can afford this, its not just about class.

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PlainBread@reddit

The fact you think people are eating fast food in the first place, as though they can afford it, is exactly what shows you have no class consciousness.

God forbid you ever have a downturn and have to do DoorDash for a while.

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Moscato359@reddit

PC Gaming is an enthusiast hobby. Enthusiast hobbies are expensive.

And 600$ for something that lasts 4 or 5 years for an enthusiast hobby is *cheap* as far as enthusiast hobbies go.

"The fact you think people are eating fast food in the first place, as though they can afford it, is exactly what shows you have no class consciousness."

Atleast 30% of the population in the US atleast can do this without any financial trouble.

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PlainBread@reddit

Definitely a tech libertarian.

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23Link89@reddit

I wouldn't even go so far as to call them a tech libertarian.

This is just larping atp.

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paskapersepaviaani@reddit

😬

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theillustratedlife@reddit

I'm hoping that the current RAM crunch leads to better optimized games for longer. It doesn't seem like that Z1 Extreme performance profile from early handhelds is getting supplanted any time soon, and most of those came with 16G of shared RAM.

If Nintendo can keep the Switch feeling modern for a decade, maybe the first generation of SteamOS handhelds can have a similarly long arc.

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PlainBread@reddit

I don't think the AI bubble is going to last much longer.

The oil crisis is going to crash it.

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devoopsies@reddit

Two wrongs do make a right afterall?

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PlainBread@reddit

In the paraphrased words of the fictional John Titor:

Buy a bicycle and learn how to maintain it.

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INITMalcanis@reddit

Disagree: £300 16GB 9060XT was an excellent option before the 'RAMpocalypse'.

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bilegeek@reddit

Don't forget the Arc B580. Gone up $40 since the start of the crisis, but it's currently ~$300 for 12gb.

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i5-2520M@reddit

3060-12GB and 6700XT were both available at reasonable prices while they were pretty recent.

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PsychoticDreemurr@reddit

Realistically speaking, it's not. Incredible games that are higher quality then what's being currently released have been able to run on 8gb seamlessly.

The problem is there's such a lack of optimization nowadays, and has been ever since DLSS became popular, that people have gotten used to it.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

8gb vram maybe fine for 1080p for now, but is definitely low for 4k. Even on 1080p, many games set 6gb vram minimum.

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F9-0021@reddit

For game developers it is, for hardware manufacturers it isn't.

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Exotic_Accident3101@reddit

for today's AAA games yes 8gb is considered low now, also Steam Machine is an 8Gb machine,

so they are fixing a small problem for new AAA games, but for 90% of steam games it's more than enough

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Marce7a@reddit

Current gen minimum to have somewhat future proof card seems to be 12 GB.

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LuisE3Oliveira@reddit

My first GPU was an RX 480 8GB, and my current one is an RX 7600 8GB. I’m just now realizing that 8GB isn't really enough anymore

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abbidabbi@reddit

My first GPU had 4 MiB of VRAM... A 3dfx Voodoo

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NoTime_SwordIsEnough@reddit

I remember buying my 6GB 1660 Ti in 2019, and thinking 6 GB may have been overkill. Boy was I wrong lol.

Guess I was naive because my 1GB 560 Ti served me well for 8 years, and I somehow just never ended-up owning any graphically-intensive 8th-gen games on Steam.

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necrophcodr@reddit

It can be, though. 8GB is plenty for MANY things when done well, and considering how little modern consoles have, 8GB should still be fine today.

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Lostronzoditurno@reddit

Little? Modern consoles have unified RAM and VRAM, like ARM processors. What are you talking about?

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necrophcodr@reddit

Yes, that is what i am talking about. Even the PS5 has 16GB of unified memory, so compared to a desktop PC with 8GB of video memory and 16GB of system memory, it should be enough in my opinion.

That's assuming it is fully dynamically accessible, which i cant say for sure. And I believe those who would know, do so by being part of the developer programs which require signing an NDA, or at least used to (still does in certain areas last i checked).

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Mumuskeh@reddit

Is 8gb vram is low, then my 2gb vram is like that meme paper thin bread slice.

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29da65cff1fa@reddit

wait, what else is eating up VRAM other than the foreground thing on your screen?

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rebootyourbrainstem@reddit

The article actually explains it pretty well, including how to see for yourself

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Rick_Mars@reddit

8Gb de VRAM es poco? Mi GPU tiene 6 :c

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halfc00kie@reddit

valve is doing more for the linux desktop in their spare time than most distros have done in a decade. kernel level vram prioritisation for 8gb cards is exactly the kind of boring practical work that actually makes linux gaming viable for normal people instead of just people willing to debug shader caches at 2am

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