Valve contractor Natalie Vock has shipped a new tool that stops Linux from “stealing your VRAM” when the GPU runs out of space.
Before that, when Linux needed to free VRAM and shove data into system RAM, it had zero context about which blocks belonged to which app. It could happily punt your running game out of VRAM to keep a random Google Chrome window sat on the GPU.
Vock’s fix teaches the kernel to make better choices when it has to evict VRAM, weighing up things like which window you are using at the time.
The change looks like it does the business, because a fresh benchmark on a 4GB Radeon RX 6500 XT saw Alan Wake II jump from about 14 average FPS to about 41.
On NJ Tech’s YouTube channel, the setup was CachyOS, with the “Install GPU boosters” option enabled to apply the tweak.
Not every game got a free lunch, with Cyberpunk 2077 and Crimson Desert flatlining and The Last of Us Part II staying stuck, while Silent Hill f and Hogwarts Legacy nudged up by a couple of frames.
Resident Evil: Requiem climbed from about 67 to about 78 FPS, which is decent, but Alan Wake II is the one that stops being a slideshow and starts behaving like a game.
As such, it doesn’t seem like this new tech is a magic silver bullet for framerate gains. That is fine, because the real win is when the rough titles stop falling off a cliff just because Chrome is feeling needy.
