Early CachyOS test puts Valve’s low-VRAM Linux patch on a 4GB GPU
Valve’s low-VRAM Linux work is now getting its first round of 4GB GPU testing. After the patch set surfaced earlier this month, NJ Tech has now tried it on a Radeon RX 6500 XT running CachyOS, one of the first distros to package the required kernel changes and helper tools.
The change comes from Natalie Vock’s work on Linux VRAM handling for AMD GPUs. In short, the goal is to give the foreground game priority over background desktop apps when dedicated VRAM is running out, instead of letting lower-priority workloads push game data into slower system memory through GTT.
Based on the video, there are some gains but they are uneven. Silent Hill f moved from 47 FPS average to 50 FPS, while Spider-Man 2 went from 60 to 62 FPS. Hogwarts Legacy changed from 60 to 61 FPS, with its 1% low improving from 45 to 47 FPS. Death Stranding 2 stayed flat at 34 FPS, Cyberpunk 2077 stayed flat at 49 FPS, and Crimson Desert held 45 FPS average with only a 1 FPS gain to 1% lows.
That lines up with how the feature was introduced. Vock described it as a fix for bad VRAM pressure behavior on low-memory Linux systems, and the easiest install path remains CachyOS. Her blog also notes that Arch users can pull the userspace tools from AUR, while CachyOS later added the support to its 6.19.12 kernel, removing the need for an earlier release candidate kernel.
Still, credit to Natalie for giving low-VRAM cards a bit more room to breathe. Her work was most likely aimed at upcoming Steam Machine-class systems with 8GB of VRAM , but as these tests show, it can also help even more memory-limited GPUs.
| Valve’s new low VRAM optimization tests | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Game | Disabled Avg FPS | Enabled Avg FPS | Avg FPS Change | Disabled 1% Low | Enabled 1% Low | 1% Low Change |
| Silent Hill f | 47 | 50 | +6.4% | 34 | 35 | +2.9% |
| Spider-Man 2 | 60 | 62 | +3.3% | 37 | 37 | 0% |
| Death Stranding 2 | 34 | 34 | 0% | 28 | 28 | 0% |
| The Last of Us Part II | 20 | 19 | -5.0% | 17 | 16 | -5.9% |
| Hogwarts Legacy | 60 | 61 | +1.7% | 45 | 47 | +4.4% |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | 49 | 49 | 0% | 40 | 40 | 0% |
| Crimson Desert | 45 | 45 | 0% | 37 | 38 | +2.7% |
Source via NotebookCheck :
