Valve seems to have just solved one of the biggest problems with gaming, which is the unchecked VRAM requirements in modern AAA games. To give an example, titles such as Capcom’s Monster Hunter Wilds were notorious on release for having an absurd VRAM requirement just to run the game normally.
The need to push high fidelity graphics over the smooth optimization of a game has become a norm, with several games releasing in unplayable states. Meanwhile, modern GPUs such as the ones from Nvidia barely meet the required VRAM needed to run them.
But that could now change for Linux users at least, thanks to a Valve Engineer, Natalie Vock, who has released reports on a way to solve the VRAM issue. She has figured out a way to unlock a significant boost in performance for AMD GPUs.
VRAM management has been improved on Linux
Being a part of Valve’s Linux dev team, she figured out a way to manage VRAM at the kernel level. Originally, Linux uses GTT to manage high VRAM consumption in games, which is how the OS prevents crashing.
But the method of allocation was inefficient. Vock notes that for games such as Cyberpunk 2077, the GPU would consume close to 6 GB of VRAM and let GTT allocate the rest to RAM, which sounds good but would result in the actual game having performance issues.
This new solution provides a real-time dmemcg-booster which properly directs the system to allocate resources so as not to trigger performance issues. She mentioned seeing immediate improvements with Cyberpunk 2077 as the GPU was now using more VRAM and flushing less memory into RAM.
Valve is definitely gearing up for the Steam Machine release
Users online have reacted positively to this new development, suggesting how much everyone has been frustrated with poor VRAM management in games. Multiple social media accounts on Twitter/X praised the Valve engineer for her contributions.
People were also reminded that the process has not been tested universally and only on Linux and AMD hardware, so most are unsure how much this would fare in the long run, since Windows is way worse with memory management.
One thing is for certain, which is that Valve is most likely working to push forward a massive optimization for the future of desktop gaming. They are going to jump into the fray soon with their Steam Machine, which not to mention, will have a GPU that is limited to 6 GB of VRAM. So they will try to ensure that performance issues are absolutely avoidable.
